A double kebab plate from Mazra in Redwood City in 2025. The owners’ first restaurant in San Bruno has finally returned after two years of renovations.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle
Brothers and owners Saif Makableh, left, and Jordan Makableh sit inside Mazra’s Redwood City location in 2024.
Juliana Yamada/Special to The Chronicle
On Saturday at 3:30 p.m., the owners of wildly popular Middle Eastern restaurant Mazra in San Bruno made a long-awaited announcement on Instagram: The restaurant was reopening that night after a two-year closure. By the time the doors opened at 5 p.m., people were already waiting in line, many of them regulars Mazra owners and brothers Saif and Jordan Makableh know from growing up in San Bruno.
“It was so good to see some of those people after two years,” said Saif Makableh. “It’s unreal. We can’t even explain it.”
The San Bruno Mazra, which gained a fervent following for flame-licked kebabs and other Jordanian-inspired fare and landed the No. 2 spot on Yelp’s list of Top 100 Places to Eat in the United States in 2021, has finally returned in a completely overhauled space.
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The Makableh brothers opened Mazra in 2020 inside what had been their father’s longtime, struggling Mediterranean market. After outgrowing the cramped space, it closed for a remodel in 2024, the same year the brothers opened a second location in Redwood City. The restaurant has since been included in the Chronicle’s Top 100 Restaurants in the Bay Area list and its owners nominated for a James Beard Award last year for Best Chef in California.
The large new patio at the renovated Mazra in San Bruno.
Courtesy Mazra
The 504 San Bruno Ave. West space has been transformed, with 177 seats, including 70 on an outdoor patio, making it even larger than the cavernous Redwood City location. The San Bruno patio is draped with passion fruit vines; both the indoor and outdoor areas are full of ferns, palms and banana and lemon trees in honor of the restaurant’s name, which means farm or garden in Arabic. The dining room also has large windows and murals with more palm trees.
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“At Mazra we just want people to feel that even when they’re dining indoors they’re outdoors,” said Makableh.
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Like at the Redwood City location, they had a 20-foot charcoal grill custom built for the new kitchen by a Texas grill expert. Mazra’s open-flame cooking over mesquite wood infuses “smokiness into everything from spiced chicken to juicy beef kebabs and even heads of cauliflower,” Chronicle critics wrote about Mazra in the 2025 Top 100 restaurants list.
The menu in San Bruno will be the same as before, including wraps stuffed with meats, tzatziki, pickles and fries ($16); kebab plates with basmati rice, pita and toum sauce ($26); fattoush salad ($14); and the whole cauliflower drizzled with lemon tahini ($14).
The brothers plan to offer long-in-the-works breakfast at both Mazra locations by the summer and to start baking their own bread out of the larger San Bruno kitchen soon.
As its popularity grew, Mazra’s slogan became “Take it easy, habibi,” which is painted on the new restaurant’s wall and is part of a white-and-gold tiled mosaic on the floor. It’s a reminder to customers that cooking over a charcoal grill takes time, said Makableh.
“A lot of customers don’t realize chicken or salmon is going to take at least 12 to 14 minutes to cook through,” said Makableh.
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Excitement over the reopening in San Bruno is reminiscent of when the restaurant landed the national Yelp ranking. Lines went around the block, a social media frenzy ensued and largely never died down. The owners have since expanded with Zorek, a Levantine café and bakery, in San Bruno last year, and hope to debut this summer Dawar 7, a shawarma stand at a San Francisco gas station on Mission and 30th streets owned by Makableh’s father-in-law, he said.
Mazra. 504 San Bruno Ave. West, San Bruno. eatmazra.com
Dining and Cooking