The Halal Table: Boston's Famous Baklava Pancakes Just Got a Second Home in Southie

The Halal Table

Thirty-seven years after a Jordanian immigrant bought a Greek diner in Cambridge, his son has opened Brookline Lunch number two on L Street in South Boston, and the baklava pancakes made the trip.

The Halal Table is our weekend tour of halal food worth talking about. Good food, good people.

If you went to school anywhere near Central Square, you already know Brookline Lunch. It is the cash-only, brick-walled diner at 9 Brookline Street in Cambridge where the menu says 100 percent halal, the pancakes come topped with baklava, and the owner hands you a spinach pie on your way out whether you ordered one or not. This month, Boston Magazine reports, the family opened a second location at 108 L Street in South Boston, in the old L Street Diner and Pizzeria space, and the neighborhood has been wandering in the open door for weeks asking when.

A family diner, 37 years in

The story starts with Jamal Abu-Rubieh, who moved from Jordan to Massachusetts in 1976 to attend Wentworth Institute of Technology, spent nearly a decade in Kansas, came back to open a cafe on Western Avenue in Cambridge, returned to Jordan to marry Manal, and in 1989 bought a Greek diner called Brookline Lunch. Manal, per Boston Magazine, is "the backbone" of the place and its number one cook. For decades the restaurant has been a no-frills neighborhood spot for hearty breakfasts and lunches that blend Middle Eastern and American food: egg sandwiches next to labneh toast, home fries next to Palestinian salad.

The South Boston location is run by Mahmood Abu-Rubieh, the couple's fourth child, who grew up in the restaurant. "Everyone I've talked to so far says that the area is really in need of a place like Brookline Lunch," he told the Boston Globe, "one that prides itself on delivering fresh food at a logical price." His brother Mushhoor, meanwhile, is reviving the Busy Bee diner in Brookline this fall. It is a family that apparently cannot stop opening breakfast places, and Boston is better for it.

What is on the menu

The Southie menu mirrors the Cambridge flagship. That means the baklava pancakes, a stack of pancakes topped with the crushed nuts and syrup of a proper baklava, which are the reason the restaurant's Instagram exists. It means banana Biscoff pancakes, a giant breakfast burrito, labna toast with Palestinian salad, spinach-stuffed savory pies, a spicy sausage shakshuka, a za'atar bowl, and steak-and-egg plates. To drink, the Karaz iced latte and lemonana, the mint lemonade that every Levantine kid recognizes on sight. "There's going to be a bit of an evolution," Mahmood told the Globe, "but nothing that you wouldn't recognize as a Brookline Lunch item."

The one big addition is a pizza oven, a nod to the previous tenant, where the team plans to bake house-made breads, pizza, and possibly subs. A halal cheese pizza from the people who invented baklava pancakes is, in our expert opinion, worth driving to Boston for.

We love to give.Jamal Abu-Rubieh, to Boston Magazine, while handing spinach pies to every neighbor who walked in

Why it belongs on the Halal Table

Boston Magazine's reporter noticed that making money never came up as the point of Brookline Lunch. Jamal spent the interview passing out savory pies to strangers. Over three decades the family built a place where a Muslim student, a construction crew, and a Cambridge professor could all order the same plate, and now they have built it again in a neighborhood that had never had a halal diner. That is what a halal table looks like when it works: fresh food at a logical price, and a door that is always open.

More from the Halal Table: Houston's halal smashburger favorite lands in Katy and the IT guy who built the Northeast's favorite halal smashburger. And if baklava pancakes are your love language, our Sweeter Than Gulab Jamun mug understands you.