Sabur

Had brunch there. Service was fast and good, food was excellent. Girlfriend got the gnocci which was amazing. Not sure why the place was deserted. The hipsters are missing out by waiting in line at Soundbites and Renee’s Café down the street.

This restaurant is a hidden gem. The wait staff is very friendly, the atmosphere is cozy and unexpectedly magical. I really feel like I have traveled farther than a walk from the Davis Square T-​stop once opening their front door. And then the food was amazing! Last night I enjoyed a thoughtfully spiced entry, fresh fruit on a bed of well-​chosen greens, a glass of red wine and then a very special chocolate mouse desert with pomegranate sauce! Yum! Treat yourself!

Sweet little restaurant — go for a date night or evening out with friends. Friendly wait staff, nice wine list, lots of vegetarian-​friendly options.

What does two stars mean? Meh. I have experienced better. And that is very true of my experience at Sabur.
The place has a good ambiance with a hipster vibe. We went int for Saturday lunch and ordered the French Toast (had heard a lot about it), Mediterranean breakfast, Tagine and Zucchini fritters. None were worth the money. The Medit breakfast was cold when brought out to us, so were the fritters. The tagine was hot and better of the lot and it seemed like the others were just sitting out turning cold while the tagine was being cooked. The french toast was highly recommended by a friend but really was no big deal. Too sweet, very cinnamon-​ish flavor and seriously, I went to IKEA after this lunch and ate a cinnabon in their café and felt it tasted better than this french toast. The fritters had no taste to them. I am really surprised at reviews calling this place amazing. This was my first and last time there. Gimme the $ 1 cinnabons at IKEA over the french toast.

What a beautiful place!
Once you are seated inside, you’d never know that you were actually in Teele Sq., Somerville.
I had the Tagine and it was absolutely beautiful! The service is good, and the unusual Balkan style fruit brandies were incredible.

Very good portions of very tasty food served by attentive staff in a very cozy and comfortably decorated place… I am a fan and will go back.

OMG! Visiting Boston and was looking for food similar to what I have eaten in Nashville. I can’t believe it but the owner actually knows the owners of the restaurant in Nashville. He cooked a custom plate for us on request. It was absolutely amazing!

If you are anywhere near this restaurant — GO THERE! The gnocchi dish I had was one of the BEST dishes I have had anywhere! I am a foodie — and this was awesome food. The menu is eclectic — the owner warm and personable and the prices reasonable. If I lived anywhere near it — I’d be there weekly. My daughter and her husband love to go for brunch.

I’ve had two great birthday experiences here! The first was a surprise birthday for a friend – just cocktails. I was the first to show up, and immediately the owner was extremely hospitable! I told him that more people were coming, and he cleared out a cute seating area near the bar. As more people came in, he pushed more tables our way. Customer service here is top notch.
The second time I came here was for my own birthday. The reservation was for 7, but of course by the time everyone drifted in, it was 8pm. Again the service was amazing from both our server and bartender. I never felt like I was an inconvenience, which I love, because I tend to be sensitive about that.
The drinks are very flavorful. I had a sweet fig cocktail and a blue cheese martini! The zucchini fritters have a nice light crisp and the red pepper sauce is a little sweet and tastes great! For my main course I had a vegetarian tagine – very spicy and delicious with figs! It was hearty and thick, but I found the overall texture a little too soft.
My friends and I had a great time here both times. Never felt hurried, always felt welcome, service is very attentive and welcoming. I look forward to coming back to try more cocktails and bold flavored entrees!

Great lounge, low light, northern African feel. Ask for the skewered shrimp wrapped with grape leaves. Delicious dipping sauces.

Not sure what cuisine these guys are or but it’s definitely a little bit more Russo-​Mediterranean though it does have a hint of dare I say American honestly though it’s delicious so it doesn’t effing matter.
DRINKS:I got a specialty martini with fig vodka and a little pomegranate and it was said to be the house martini it was somewhat sweet but not overpowering league girly fruit umbrella drink type sweet. it was just as good as fruit nectar honey-​ish sweet and very very savory oddly enough and it was very delicious and very unique loved it.
Biff got a tequila drink what she seem to enjoy and was very or very lemony online meeting which I also liked.
MAINS: I also got the stuffed cheese gnocchi. It was really out of this world delicious the Biff got the polenta chicken dish which was also delicious but my gnocchi wiped the floor with his polenta dish so suck on that Biff.
ATMOSPHERE: We were stuffed with absolutely fabulous food, had received great service and truly felt relaxed in the amazing lounge atmosphere. It’s a bit off the beaten path in Teele Sq. This is a touch of a tragedy, because this place should be teeming with people if it were cetrally located. The lounge has perfect service, is really comfortable and seems like a great to bring your friends

Four of us for dinner Friday night. At 6:30 the dining room was getting full. Service was top notch from start to finish, attentive but not intrusive. The server found two reds for us that we really liked. Dinner rolls were served with a salty oil– great idea but a little too salty for me. My dinner unfortunately was the worst of the four. Vegetable tangine garnished with one date looked like cinnamon was an afterthought. Sauce was gummy and flavorless although veggies has good texture. Mine was the exception. Lamb shank, and scallops with asparagus were delish, as was lamb pasta. Would have been five stars if I had liked my food.

This place truly sucks. I happened upon this place because everything else we tried was full… now I see why it was so empty. Food tasted like it was frozen and everything is about 10 – 15 dollars too expensive. My food came out cold, not just lukewarm but COLD. I asked to speak to a manager and ended up talking to some jerk who said he owned the place. That gave some insight as to why it was such a poorly run establishment.
My suggestion… even if you have a lengthy wait, try ANYWHERE else in the davis/​teele square area.

Food and service are ok– like the moody Mediterranean motif. Food had highs and lows– the app platter with hummus and grape leaves were tasty! On the other hand every seafood dish we ordered (4 of them) were overcooked and dry. Their strong suit is the slow cooked dishes and their sauces. Apps are well priced whole the main dishes were overpriced for what they are. Service was on the slow side and server had little knowledge of drinks or food being served.

This place is very nice, couches on the inside & they also have a patio as well. It has some really damn tasty food. But what I don’t understand is why bread doesn’t automatically come when you order your food. I had to wait until afterwards to ask for it since I saw other tables w/​the bread basket. There should not be such a wait for our food, but we didn’t order any appetizers which almost all the tables around us had done. The service was ok since they were attentive when we got there but once it filled up we had to flag him down to get our check & stuff. What I don’t like is the portions you get for what your paying.

Being extremely familiar with the Bosnian culture, I decided to give this place a try because I was craving čevapi and burek. I ordered these items for pick up and was told 10 – 15 mins on the phone. I got there and they told me about ten more minutes, which I was fine with still (I’m very patient)…but as almost 40 minutes passed, I finally got my food and was feeling a little annoyed. Not to mention that this food was very pricey (about $ 30) for tiny tiny portions. I know that it costs about $ 8 to make the whole dish. The food was decent however, but not for this price.

By far the best dinner we’ve had in the Davis/​teele square area. I had the spinach and feta stuffed gnocchi which was buttery and delicious. My girlfriend had the salmon and raved about both the presentation and taste. The waiter recognized it was out first time at Sabur and comped our wine. We will definitely be back here!

I came to check out this place on a Saturday afternoon and we were the only customers in there. The spot is cool and seems as though it would be more fun for dinner. We ordered sausages and pita for an app as well as potato and leek lataka’s. Both were were good and flavorful. I ordered grilled salmon and my friends ordered the hamburger. The hamburger was not your typical burger because it is just the patty served over egg and spinach. I guess if you are on the no carb diet it works for you. My salmo was grilled with enough seasoning and served over rice and salad.
The experience overall was good and worth a try.

Let’s put it this way. If it were the 90s, I would brave the political instability in the region to eat Balkan food if it’s is really as good as the pan-​Balkan cuisine is at this place. While I love Turkish food, calling this place Turkish is an oversimplification.
The dishes were creative, well-​executed, delicious. The service was pleasant. The ambience was nice and intimate and the coppertop tables (not batteries) gave the place some extra panache. Appetizers, entrees, and desserts were all phenomenal. Oh and their meat is Halal. I particularly loved the beef sirloin with gorgonzola walnut cream and garlic potato, the herb-​grilled chicken breast, and the slow roasted lamb and vegetables.
I literally have nothing bad to say, except that I wish so many of their dishes didn’t contain wine.
Seriously, if the world knew how amazing this food was, there might be another Balkan conflict. Or world peace.

We just went for dessert and tried a couple that looked interesting and different.
One was the apricots filled with marcarpone. They were amazing. Not too sweet but sweet enough to satisfy the sugar you need after dinner. Good texture and loved the combination of fruit, cheese and a honey-​lemon sauce.
The other dessert we ordered was the chocolate tarte. Loved that the portion was relatively small. The cake was excellent and the sauces on the side were good too: pomegranate and caramel. The pomegranate especially was good.
Would go back and try more desserts or the savory stuff. The ambience, service and décor were nice and not difficult to find parking.

So I didn’t exactly eat here, but I had to be a big bad adult and chaperone a sorority event here which included a bunch of food and whatnot, and I have to say, that this restaurant is definitely really cute and nice inside, and I’m sort of surprised I still haven’t really had a real meal here!
True, their regular menu is a bit on the pricey side, which is why my grad student stipend motivated self has never had quite enough motivation to spend that much on dinner there when there are tons of other places whose menu looks a little better. But for a venue that rents out to a sorority for their date parties, it actually is a great space. They are very accommodating here and move all of the tables out, allow DJs to set up, they have a full bar, and boy do they make strong mixed drinks for $ 6! My rum and diet was pretty much a cup full of rum with a mere splash of diet, so you definitely get a ton of bang for your buck drink wise here!
Food wise, however, those chicken skewers they put out were just way way overcooked. They were really dry and you found yourself searching for water in an oasis after they just instantly had this power to dry out your entire mouth. But their phyllo dough filled with melted warm feta cheese however were pretty addicting. I would definitely come back for those. The hummus was decent and pita is pita, and the grape leaves were also pretty good, but I think in a drunken sorority crowd it wasn’t exactly a popular item, but I definitely took some home for snacks. So all in all, a decent spot for a formal/​date party dinner party event for sure, but stay clear from those chicken skewers, and if they started happy hour or prie fixe menu options that were cheaper I might be enticed to try a real meal here.

The more reviews I write for Unilocal,the harder it gets to think of new places to review. The obvious solution is to try new restaurants (believe me, I have been), but there are dozens of places I’ve been where I certainly won’t be going back, and they need to be reviewed as well. Sabur is one of those places.
My boyfriend and I (quite unfortunately) chose to go here for Valentine’s Day this year. It’s on the walk to his apartment from Davis, and we often wondered aloud if it was any good. The reviews on Unilocal were promising, so we decided to give it a go. To say we were disappointed would be an understatement. The food ranged from poor to mediocre, and for more than $ 20 an entrée, we certainly expected better. My boyfriend was dismayed with his steak, which came medium rare as opposed to well done (I shake my head every time he orders it that way, but that’s how he likes it), and boldly sent it back. I hate sending food back, but in this case I think he was completely within his right. Our waitress acted like she was personally affronted by the request, but she was a virtual nonentity the entire night, so let’s not dwell on her.
When the steak came back out, it was immediately clear that the whole plate had been shoved back in the oven. The steak was served with gorgonzola walnut cream and garlic mashed potatoes, both of which melted and ran all over the plate. How a chef could allow something like that to leave his or her kitchen baffles me to this day.