Named “Best Vegan Restaurant 2024” by Boston Magazine, South Boston’s Lulu Green is opening its second location in Cambridge’s Kendall Square in late spring.
Lulu Green was co-founded by sisters Mary and Nada Lattouf. Inspired by their Lebanese heritage and the Middle Eastern diet they grew up on, they started Lulu Green with the goal of providing healthy and delicious food, entirely plant-based, to their community.
“My dad farmed our estate olive grove back in Lebanon,” Mary Lattouf said. “Growing up in Brockton on the South Shore, my dad had a big garden, harvesting apples, pears, peaches, cherries, lots of vegetables like potatoes, corn, kale, tomatoes. Basically, you name it, it was in the garden.”
As children, whole foods and home-cooked meals were the only foods Mary and Nada knew.
“I was dying to get my hands on McDonald’s as a kid,” Mary Lattouf said. “I certainly didn’t appreciate it growing up, but later I did, and ultimately made the journey to becoming 100 percent plant-based.”
Before founding Lulu Green, Mary Lattouf worked for Whole Foods Market as director of its Healthy Eating Program; Nada’s background is as a pharmacist at CVS Health.
“We have this great combination of understanding food as medicine and the benefits of nutrition on the body,” Mary Lattouf said.
The Lattoufs, along with chef Brian Corbley, who serves as director of operations, opened Lulu Green in South Boston in January 2020, just weeks before the Covid pandemic hit. They pivoted to serving takeout only, inspired by the relationships they had cultivated with their South Boston community within the first six weeks of opening.
The idea to open a second location in Cambridge came about when the Lattoufs started noticing how many guests they were serving were coming from Cambridge.
“We’ve gotten so many requests to open a restaurant in Cambridge,” Mary Lattouf said. “And it’s just such a great community and a great city of culture, innovation and art. We feel like our food is really innovative, so it’s a great place to be.”
Kendall Square’s Lulu Green location will open at 675 W. Kendall St., previously occupied by PlantPub, another plant-based restaurant that closed in late 2023. An official opening day is not set, but Mary Lattouf estimated it should be some time in late May or early June.
A broad menu
The menu, which will be largely the same as at the South Boston location, is not “a Middle Eastern restaurant, per se,” she said. “We do tacos, Asian-inspired dishes, pastas.”
A hummus at Lulu Green, for instance, is from a recipe by the Lattoufs’ mother – “She’s taught our chef how to make a lot of the recipes and how to work with lots of Middle Eastern spices,” Lattouf said – and is on the menu for brunch and lunch with offerings such as marinated olives, muhammara and tahini beets. But it’s alongside huevos rojos, pancakes and avocado toast. There are sweets, smoothies and açai bowls, burgers and sandwiches, and salads and bowls, all vegan. The Kendall store will serve hand-cut fries as a Cambridge exclusive.
“Our chef does a fantastic job, and he has many years of globally inspired experience,” Mary Lattouf said. “We want the dishes to taste even better than they look.”
There’s an equally strong emphasis on drinks, both coffee – sourced from Barismo, a Cambridge roaster – and cocktails made without artificial colors, flavors or preservatives.
“The grenadine at our bar, for example, is made in-house and it gets its red color from pomegranate juice,” Mary Lattouf said. “We don’t use anything artificial or any hydrogenated oils or trans fats in anything we make.”
A “bright, open space”
Hours are being decided, but the restaurant will serve weekday lunch and dinner and weekend brunch. The restaurant has a “fun, happy vibe,” she said, similar to the South Boston space, as well as an outdoor patio.
“We have a great designer we work with, and it will have a very playful color palette,” she said. “It’s a bright, open space with high ceilings, and we’re doing low, comfortable banquette seating, so it’ll be very cozy.”
The attention to the space and what’s on the menu is part of the Lattoufs’ goal to create gathering places where they can build community and people can build connections.
“Our mom’s house was always open to guests, the fridge always stocked and ready with something great that she had cooked that day. She was always ready, at the drop of a hat, for people to arrive and to feed them,” Mary Lattouf said. “We want the restaurants to be an extension of our home, where guests can come together and enjoy great food and warm hospitality.”
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Lulu Green is SOOO good. I go at least once every other week, and will now be going more often.
Welcome to Cambridge, Lulu! Hope you last longer than Plant Pub.