Redwood City restaurant reopens after kitchen fire

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REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (KRON) – For three months, a Redwood City staple was shut down after a kitchen fire took it out of business. But this week, Mazra re-opened its doors.

“So how it happened, the charcoal flames actually got behind the wall and it burned through. We felt the flames,” said co-owner Jordan Makableh. 

Makableh’s family moved to the United States from the Republic of Jordan before he was born. For him, this restaurant is about more than how the food tastes.

“This food is our culture. I mean that in every which way… bringing everyone together, giving that family feel to everyone that walks in,” he said. 

That’s why when the two-alarm fire tore through their restaurant in June, they went to work.

“We really anticipated a 6-12 month (turnaround) at bare minimum, however a three-month turnaround with the help of the city helped make it happen,” Makableh said. 

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The kitchen fire may not have looked large, but it set the restaurant back by about a quarter of a million dollars. The workers are just happy no one was hurt.

Now in its first couple of days back in business, Mazra is serving a full house.

“We get a lot of influence from our food, from Jordan to Lebanon to Palestine. As long as it’s a Middle Eastern food, my brother and I want to do it,” Makableh said.

The staff feel represented too, like Nikki Abbasi, whose family is from Iran.

“It’s awesome,” she said. “I worked in Italian and Mexican (restaurants) but there’s something about this Jordanian fusion. It’s like everything is awesome working here.” 

Kari Totah and her husband are regulars and are excited to come back. Totah married into a Palestinian family and says this food is on par.

“Large portions, delicious, it the closest thing to my mother-in-law’s cooking,” she said. “All this she would have around a table, it’s just a warm feeling I get from eating it.”

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Jack Molmud

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