SOFRA Bakery & Cafe

Join us at Sofra — a Middle Eastern bakery and café located at 1 Belmont Street, right on the Cambridge-Watertown line. We offer sweet, savory, and contemporary twists on the traditional cuisines of Turkey, Lebanon, and Greece. Come take a seat on our kilim-lined banquettes and enjoy a bazaar of flavors: Whips and spreads from the mezze bar; a tangy lamb shawarma with pickled turnips; a unique take on the traditional Turkish breakfast; a Persian-spiced donut or an ooey-gooey sesame cashew bite for a sweet treat. The café’s store offers a wide array of house-made and farm-sourced preserves, prepared foods, packaged delights perfect for gift-giving, pantry staples from around the world, and carefully sourced spices and spice blends. Before Sofra opened in August 2008, we took a trip to Turkey looking for inspiration and a name for our new venture. Once there, we learned a new word – sofra- that always seemed to bring a smile to the locals’ faces. Synonymous with generosity and hospitality, sofra can refer to a shared picnic on a specific kilim rug or a special preparation of a meal – at its heart, it’s a word about sharing and enjoying the unique bounty that comes only from community. Our savory menu is inspired by traditional themes from the Middle East and offers a wide array of shawarma, meze, falafel, and flatbread sandwiches. Our selection of pastries and sweets is deliciously exotic but always homespun; novel recreations of Middle Eastern desserts like baklava and ma’amoul are offered alongside more familiar treats like chocolate Earthquake cookies, sesame-cashew bars and coconut macaroons. At Sofra, we take our inspiration from community near and far: Sometimes by the exotic and aromatic spice blends from international curators; others, by locally produced chocolate or fresh produce from our family farm, Siena Farms.  Together, these diverse ingredients create extraordinary dishes.