Brookline Family Restaurant

I have been there twice with my friends and the only thing I can say is that is AWESOME, first of all, the portions are really huge, It doesn’t matter what your order is, in my case I went with turkish friends and I always ask them options to order, my first time there I ordered Iskender which was a good choice, Iskender is a big piece of lamb, that you can order with yogurt (It’s not sweet yogurt but I like it) and a kind of tomato sauce, natural tomatoes and a big pepper that fits good with the flavors If you like spicy food, my second time there I ordered the typical kebab, it was good too I think is almost the same as Iskender but Kebab is lamb covered by a kind of bread similar to a «tortilla».
If you are turkish (I am not) I think maybe you would feel like home, they have several different turkish beverages, I tried Cola Turka, which is pretty much Coke, but not exactly, I liked it.
At the end I recommend you to drink a cup of turkish coffee, personally I prefer it with sugar, but that’s up to you.
The place is nice, the service is very good and fast, and is a very good option If you want to try something different.

The portions are huge! I got the lamb and chicken shish kebab and it was SO GOOD. I wouldn’t recommend the pizzas (I got the turkish sausage) if you are expecting something like an american pizza. I would love to get their kebab as take out since it can feed be for 2 meals.

We are regulars at family restaurant. We pretty much stick with the kebabs every time. The people and food are both nice.
NB: There seems to be a special sliding scale menu for groupon orders.

this is about the only place i can find descent edible food in Boston.
It tends to be n the oily side, but salads are made of fresh vegetables, not Boston usual wax substitutes, everything is quite tasty, there is good bakhlava, alcohol, coffee, soups.
Medeterenian at its best and inexpensive, you can eat and take some home for $ 25 total.

The Traditional Turkish food is great, some nights are better than others.
If you know good Flan and like… pass on their Flan.

While waiting for my brother, I stumbled upon Brookline Family Restaurant which is a family-​owned restaurant that authentic Turkish cuisine. You can come here for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and/​or Dessert.
For Breakfast, they serve eggs, pancakes, French toast, omelettes, breakfast sandwiches, Turkish breakfast plates, and typical breakfast side orders.
For Lunch, they serve all kinds of wraps, all kinds of sandwiches, Turkish kebab sandwiches, Turkish vegetable sandwiches, and cold and hot subs.
For Dinner, they serve cold and hot appetizers, soups, pasta, seafood, Turkish pizzas, entrees (such as kebabs, shish kebabs, and musakka), kebab with yogurt sauce, salads, and side orders.
For Dessert, they serve three kinds of baklava, Kadayif, Sutlac, Kunefe, Kazabdibi (Milk Pudding), Sekerpare, Burma, frozen yogurt, and Turkish beverages.
My family and I tried their dessert — Baklava, Sekerpare, and Kazandibi. I liked how all of their desserts weren’t too sweet and lightly drizzled with honey. I enjoyed the pistachio baklava more than the walnut baklava — it was more fragrant. The Sekerpare is a moon shaped almond cookie topped with slivered almonds and honey. The
Kazandibi is a milk pudding made with whole milk. Even though it tasted like milk from a carton, I liked it!

Came here on a Friday night to get late dinner. We ordered chicken and beef kebabs which came with rice and vegetables. I was surprised to find that they didn’t serve lamb which was a disappointment. I though the beef one was okay, but the chicken kebab was really good. They marinated that chicken so well. It was super flavorful. The dish also came with a very spicy green hot pepper and I thought my mouth was on fire. I can usually handle spicy food but that was just a bit too much. I might come back here again just to get their chicken kebab again.
Scratch that — They do serve lamb!

Really poor customer service. They messed up my take out order and wanted to charge me for another order instead of correcting the original one.

Total Disaster Takeout. I ordered a Iskender Kebab and Lahmacun. Picked it up, came home to find out that the Lahmacun was totally dry, looked and tasted like it was re-​heated ten times over. The Iskender Kebab came without any yogurt… funny. So I call them back hoping that they can deliver the yogurt in case they had forgotten to put it in the bag. The lady over the phone conveniently informs me that they have been out of yogurt all day. IS THIS A JOKE? would you ever serve a hot dog without the sausage? If she had cared to inform me that they were out of yogurt when I was placing my order I would have order something else? Iskender Kebab without yogurt is dried strips of meat and that is exactly what I got. We politely requested if we could order an alternative dish since they outright misguided us on our order… The woman goes onto say no refunds and if you want to order a new dish you will have to pay for it. IS THIS CUSTOMER SERVICE? CRAPPY FOOD AND NO DECENCY TO ADMIT YOUR MISTAKE!!! Called them again a day after to talk to the manager who said that the lady who was at the counter the day before isn’t there today. I ended up throwing away the food and they lost a regular customer.
Served to Perfection is BS.

I really want to like this place more, because they’re super nice and there’s always a ton of food, and when we’ve ordered delivery they’ve thrown in free dessert. But in general, I’m disappointed with most of the things we order. The veggies are always mushy and overcooked. I have it on good authority that the lamb dishes are pretty good, but I’m vegetarian.
Do try the desserts; it’s okay that they’re mushy and overcooked because they’re desserts. Do avoid ordering a bunch of appetizers and/​or side dishes if you’re dining in, because there will be more food than can easily fit on the table and your leftovers won’t keep well in the fridge (the mushiness problem is really made worse overnight). Also, get ready for tons of unexplained white bread.

Whole fish served grilled or pan field every day? Awesome!
imam bayildi (for non turks this will be the most awesome stuff eggplant you’ve ever had)
home-​made bread? yes please.
This little gem of restaurant is perfect homey place for family meals.

The sultans delight was one of the best dishes I’ve ever had! The lamb melted apart and the eggplant purée was so tasty.
We also had the manti (the ‘pasta’ dish) — was great!
Highly recommend this place! And service was so nice.

With good company, good food becomes great food, great becomes awesome, awesome becomes ecstatic. Bad food remains bad. I came to this place with wonderful company.
Brookline Family Restaurant was a fantastic choice suggested by a great connoisseur Bostonian friend. We went there to celebrate a friend’s birthday and be thankful for a good company.
Atmosphere and ambience are cozy and lovely. Waitresses were super friendly, professional and pleasant. The waitress took the time to answer questions of 8 picky dudes about the menu and accommodate for a Groupon deal. She finished taking the orders with a big smile.
If you’re vegetarian or love eggplants dishes, you will FALL in LOVE with this place. The appetizers were my favorite treat here. Starting with the complementary white kidney beans salad which is incredible. To me, it’s equal to a very fresh, nicely seasoned tropical ceviche. The bread was average. Eggplants salads were just amazing. Ordered more than 4 types including babaghanouj, and all were so tasty.
The entrees were great too. Lamb shank dishes were ginormous! The combo grilled lamb and chicken was tinder and tasty. Don’t get the side rice. Get the side salad, because it’s so good.
For dessert, we ordered rice milk pudding and knafeh. About knafeh; it has 2 types. The ”fine” knafeh where the surface is made of ground semolina dough vs ”rough” Knafeh which has a crust made from long thin noodle threads. My favorite is the ”fine” knafeh with less sugar syrup. This place makes rough knafeh as most of Levantine restaurants in the US. It was great and tasty.
Overall, you won’t be disappointed here. Next time, will come to this place for the eggplants cold salads and the white beans salad. They were just fantastic!

TL;DR: The Turk I went with said it was the worst Turkish food he’d ever had. I’d tend to agree. Even with that, it’s not a disaster. Avoid the Iskender and the manti.
We had heard from a Turkish friend that this place wasn’t good, but other friends said that the food was pretty decent. We went with an open mind and ordered two ayran (salty yogurt drink), iskender doner (I had a major craving), and manti.
A free appetizer of white beans with bread came first, and it was easily the best piece of the meal. The beans were cooked well, with the sourness of lemon.
However, when the main courses came out, we were extremely disappointed. Instead of thin like Manti should be, the dough was thick and chewy, almost halfway to a dumpling. The manti was lightly coated with what looked like a tomato sauce (which neither of us had never seen before) and served with a side of lukewarm yogurt. (Normally, it’s supposed to be a garlic-​yogurt sauce.)
The Iskender doner, instead of being in the turkish style of layered thin strips of meat, was the Greek gyro style, completely throwing off the texture and flavor of the dish. Normally, pide is placed under the doner meat, but they used some sort of bread, presumably the same bread as the appetizer. It also was entirely missing the butter that is normally used as a sauce on Iskender, or at least I couldn’t taste it.
I’m sure you can appreciate this as a decent meal so long as you don’t know what the original is supposed to taste like, but I couldn’t recommend this to anyone.
(As an aside, listening to the Turkish coming from the manager’s (owner’s?) mouth, he was really mistreating the workers.)

Visiting Boston and wanted to try something new and different and something that had a Groupon. This place was our lucky choice. I was a little apprehensive as the reviews are rather mixed but we figured what the heck. We were not disappointed.
It is not a huge restaurant but they do have a pretty substantial menu. I was glad to see some regular food for the kids, who refused to be as daring as the adults. The servers were friendly and really stayed on top of clearing plates and filling our glasses with water. We really enjoyed the white bean salad and hummus. We only wish the hummus came with pita chips or naan bread or something to scoop it up with. They do serve bread rolls and so we made do with that to eat the hummus. We also had stuffed eggplant as an appetizer and for the one person in the group who isn’t big on eggplant… they loved it.
The portions are HUGE. Really two people can share one plate… unless you are my husband or I. We ate everything on our plates. And sadly didn’t save room for dessert.
Recommend giving this place a try, you will be happily surprised.

Came here during ramadan just before it was time to break fast and the place was packed! We didn’t think to call for a reservation, but luckily they were able to seat us after just a few minutes. We were presented with bread, a white bean salad and dates before ordering. The salad was really simple but so tasty. For meals, we ordered grilled kofte and mixed adana. The mixed adana was a combo of lamb and chicken. The lamb was a tad salty but had great overall flavor, I would order it again. Our sides included rice and a cucumber/​tomato salad. Overall, I think the value was great — we left with a small doggy bag and full stomachs for just $ 40. No room for dessert this time, but I have tried the baklava and milk pudding on another visit and both were amazing!

Atmosphere is sub par, prices are high for this type of restaurant and food $ 20 for Musaka or Okra dinner dish. $ 4.50 for a tiny piece of Baklava.
Food is over cooked and mushy. Lamb is ok. Still toopricey for this quality.
Waitress staff seems dis-​organized.

Excellent portions of food, even with the Groupon. If you don’t care about traditional customs of not taking a doggy bag, then you will have plenty to take back home with you.
The appetizers were delicious, we had the stuffed eggplants. This is on top of the complementary bread and white bean salad. All that by itself is a meal.
Then comes the entrees… wowsers that’s a lot of food! Since we were already full from the appetizers, we took a good portion home for dinner that night.
The service could have been slightly better, i.e., checking in on us for more water, offering dessert, and providing the check. We waited so long for all these items that we had to go up to the counter to pay, leaving me frustrated enough not to get my free Baklva courtesy of Unilocal.
Nevertheless, we will go back and bring our friends and family here in the near future.

It is a wonderful place, I honestly feel like it is home .
The Turkish waitresses are very friendly and very helpful specially perna .
Perna you are awesome girl.

This is my last time ever ordering this place. When calling in, you will speak to a young girl who has no common sense. You tell her the order and she repeats the order back to you. So you think, great, everything is fine. Wrong! The food gets here and Most of it is all wrong or missing drinks, no cheese. So I called back and she picked up the phone. Me, «You know who this is right?» Her, «Yes, how can I help you?», «The order is incorrect and things are missing and you forgot the Root Beer.»
OH I sorry, she states. Sorry, what are you talking about, we went over this order twice over the phone, and let m tell you something. We order from hear all the time and this is now the 3^rd time you have gave us the incorrect order! And you are the same lady who always takes the orders and you problem is, whoops, I forgot.
Are you kidding me? This person is an Oxygen Robber, the food was cold and items were missing. They took another order and that took 35 minutes. I will never eat here again or do any ordering. Oh and by the way people, this is just a Breakfast order!