Cafe Barada closes in Cambridge after four decades
The Salameh family's Lebanese restaurant on Massachusetts Avenue serves its last kebabs and grape leaves on 5 December, ending a run that began in Arlington in 1985.
Cafe Barada, the Lebanese restaurant the Salameh family has run on Massachusetts Avenue for most of this century, closes on Saturday 5 December after more than four decades in business.
The restaurant sits at 2269 Massachusetts Avenue in North Cambridge. It opened in Arlington in 1985, before the Salameh family moved it to its current Cambridge address, where it has traded for most of the years since.
Cafe Barada built its following on a short list of dishes made the same way for decades: grilled kebabs, stuffed grape leaves and fattoush salad, served in a dining room regulars describe as closer to a neighbour's kitchen than a restaurant.
A neighbourhood loses its kebabs the quiet way: a lease, a letter, a last Saturday.
The Salameh family announced the closure by email to customers rather than through a public statement. "For more than four decades, it has been our joy and privilege to serve you," the family wrote.
They added a note of hope rather than finality: "we hope it is not a final goodbye." The email sets out nothing further about what, if anything, comes next for the family or the Massachusetts Avenue site.
A fixture since 1985
Cafe Barada's run predates most of Cambridge's current restaurant scene. It opened the same decade as some of the city's oldest surviving kitchens, and it has outlasted several waves of rent increases that pushed other long-running, family-run restaurants out of Cambridge and Somerville over the past five years.
No reason for the closure appears in the family's message, and Cafe Barada has not answered further questions about the lease or the building's future use.
Boston's restaurant map keeps shifting
The closure lands in the same week as two other changes nearby: Wahlburgers is shutting its Fenway location after 11 years once its lease expires, and Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group has opened a third Boston-area Daily Provisions, in Back Bay. Independent kitchens are not alone in retrenching: earlier this month, a Gulf Coast seafood chain closed six locations to concentrate on its strongest markets.
Cafe Barada's regulars have until 5 December for one more plate of kebabs and grape leaves. After that, the Salameh family's note leaves the door open, if not much else, to a return.
