The East Bay’s Hottest Brunch Is a Dip Lover’s Paradise

The first time I tried to eat at Lulu, I had no idea it was one of the hardest-to-snag brunch reservations in the East Bay.

A quick Google Maps search had clued me in to the availability of Palestinian mezzes in this sleepy stretch of West Berkeley. But the sign outside said that weekend brunch service was by reservation only — and, as a sweetly apologetic server informed us, they were already fully booked for the day. This proved to be a running refrain: The following weekend, I called first thing in the morning. Fully booked. I planned ahead and tried calling on a Wednesday. Booked all weekend long.

By the time I secured a table — more than a week in advance — it felt like a minor miracle. (“Usually you have to call two or three weeks ahead,” a Lulu employee later told me.) But when my family finally sat down for our long-awaited mezze brunch, it didn’t take long to understand why reservations are such a hot ticket. One bite of chef Mona Leena Michael’s silky, umami-forward chili hummus, loaded with pine nuts and shimeiji mushrooms, and I was already making plans for my next visit.

This restaurant is a dip lover’s paradise, I thought to myself, scooping up more hummus with a hunk of rich sumac focaccia. And that was before I’d even tasted the creamy muhammara or the spicy, tangy fava bean dip known as ful. The spreads come as part of Lulu’s abundant and extremely Instagram-friendly $30-a-person prix-fixe brunch spread, which takes the time-tested Palestinian tradition of feasting on assorted dips, and things to dip, and turns it into a special occasion.

As Michael tells it, the restaurant is a particular creature of the pandemic. As soon as lockdown hit, she was laid off from her job as chef at Dyafa, an upscale Arab restaurant on the Jack London waterfront that never wound up reopening. She hustled flatbreads out of her apartment for a while — as “the Mana’eesh Lady” — until someone ratted her out to the Alameda County health department. It was at this point that Michael came across the tiny, out-of-the-way space on Camelia Street that used to be a British tea room. She opened Lulu there in August of 2021.

The setting helped shape the concept. Inspired by the charmingly bedecked three-tiered cake stands she’d always loved at classic tea rooms like Lovejoy’s in San Francisco, Michael came up with the idea of doing a big brunch board topped with elegant versions of Palestinian mezzes and dips — a kind of “Arabic high tea,” she explains.

“The goal was to create something that wasn’t just a basic dining experience,” Michael says. “With the pandemic, people really needed a reason to go out — something special.”

What that means, in part, is that aesthetics are a big part of the restaurant’s appeal. A big mezze board is going to be a thing of beauty at almost any Turkish or Palestinian restaurant, but at Lulu, I watched a member of the staff spend several minutes arranging individual sprigs of mint on the board like a master florist. It’s the kind of eye-catching, slightly over-the-top presentation that elicits oohs and ahhs when it hits the table.

While the exact makeup of the brunch prix fixe changes from week to week, it generally consists of three dips, three types of bread (mana’eesh, sesame seed–topped Jerusalem bagels and sumac focaccia), crudités, falafel, a seasonal vegetable and one additional item — “something fun,” Michael says, like fried za’atar polenta topped with whipped feta.

Really, though, all of the food is meant to be fun and not strictly traditional. “I like to say that Lulu is a California restaurant with Palestinian influence,” Michael says, explaining that she developed an appreciation for all of the Bay Area’s diverse food cultures while growing up in San Jose.

“Palestinians don’t flavor their hummus with chilis,” she says. “I didn’t want to open up another Arabic restaurant that just serves the same BS. I didn’t want to just do shawarma and hummus and pita bread.”

Every item on Lulu’s bread board takes Michael’s Palestinian family recipes — as well as the Egyptian food traditions of Lulu’s other chef, Peter Girgis — and riffs off of them in playful ways. The falafel comes crowned with a smear of chili-flecked black garlic tahini. The ful — listed on the menu as “refried beans,” in an artful bit of cultural translation — is topped with labneh and chimichurri. “We jazzed it up,” Michael says. She drew the line, though, when Girgis wanted to add a whole bunch of cumin to the ful, in the Egyptian style. (“Abso-fucking-lutely not, bro!” she says, laughing.) The a la carte menu includes things like a shakshuka-chilaquiles hybrid and a fried chicken sandwich with “banh mi vibes.”

In about a month, the restaurant will add dinner service on Wednesdays and Thursdays. While the menu is a work in progress, Michael says customers can expect tapas-style small plates like Girgis’s pickled eggplants (inspired by his mother’s recipe) served with burrata. A signature dish will be a take on shish barak, an Arabic lamb dumpling, reimagined as a soup dumpling.

Meanwhile, Michael says she feels bad about how many people she’s had to turn away due to the restaurant’s small size. Fortunately, change is on the way: Sometime in November, she hopes, the restaurant will move to a bigger space a few blocks away, where she’ll have room to seat walk-ups and large groups, as well as a private dining room for special events in the back.

“All of our terrible reviews are people who drove from San Bruno with eight people and say, ‘What do you mean you can’t seat us?’” Michael says. “I’m just happy that I’ll be able to accommodate people in a more welcoming manner.”

Lulu is located at 1019 Camelia St. in Berkeley. It’s open for breakfast (9–11 a.m.) and lunch (11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.) on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Friday through Sunday, it serves brunch 9:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m., by reservation only. Soon, it will also start dinner service on Wednesdays and Thursdays.