When Darwin’s Ltd. closed its flagship café on Mount Auburn Street after more than 30 years, Cambridge neighbors watched the storefront change hands and wondered what would stick. What stuck is Luxor Cafe — an Egyptian-inspired, family-owned spot where the menu is halal, the downstairs seating doubles as a prayer space, and the owner’s goal is a third place that is not a bar.

That owner is Abdelrahman Hassan, who goes by Abdel. In February and March 2025, Cambridge Day and The Boston Globe both profiled the then-23-year-old as he pushed through renovations, late-night Ramadan hours and a community he said was harder to find in Greater Boston than in the cafés of Egypt.

From dental-school savings to a café

Hassan told Cambridge Day (Chloe Jad, Feb. 28, 2025) that he had saved about $80,000 and set aside four years for dental school before deciding dentistry was not for him. He told himself he had “four years to build something.” A family friend and mentor, Ibrahim Ibrahim — owner of Black Seed Halal Grill and Cafe 26 in Boston — steered him toward a café rather than flipping houses, and Hassan worked shifts at Cafe 26 to learn the trade.

He looked at more than a dozen locations, Cambridge Day reported, before taking over 148 Mount Auburn Street, the longtime Darwin’s flagship. He finalized the deal during Ramadan 2024. Renovation nights ran until 4 a.m.; he told the paper he sometimes slept in the café. “It was tough,” he said. “When I look back at it, I don’t even know how I was able to do that.”

The Boston Globe (March 25, 2025) said Hassan quietly launched Luxor in May 2024. Sand-colored walls, etched hieroglyphics, a scarab logo and downstairs mosaic lamps and cushions — some packed from Cairo by his parents — evoke Egyptian cafés rather than a sterile chain. Cambridge Day said Ibrahim talked him out of an all-white look: “This is not a hospital. This is a cafe.”

Halal food and Egyptian classics

Luxor’s online menu lists breakfast and lunch sandwiches, espresso drinks, matcha and French toast specials, plus Egyptian items such as Alexandria-style kibdah (spiced beef liver), Cairo-style hawawshi (spiced minced meat in pita), shakshoka, eggs with pasterma, baklava and Om Ali French toast. Signature drinks include a baklava latte and an Egyptian hibiscus refresher. Several sandwiches keep Darwin’s names — Harvard Yard, Cambridge Common, Darwin’s Mt. Auburn — which Hassan summed up to the Globe as “what’s not broken, don’t fix it.”

The Globe reported that Luxor became “100 percent halal” about three months before that March 2025 story (roughly late 2024). Hassan told the paper that as a Muslim he needed a place where people who keep halal could eat without guessing. The café’s site lists “Halal Food” among what it is known for, and menu add-ons include halal sausage.

A third space after Maghrib

Places to gather after work in the United States, Hassan told Cambridge Day, tend to be bars. He wanted a community room like the cafés he remembered from Egypt: board games, soccer on a projector, poetry, trivia. “I wanted something to bring people together,” he said. “You finish work and you come here, you play board games, you vibe, eat, whatever it is.”

Barista Sahra Ahmed, a Northeastern student and one of Luxor’s first hires, told Cambridge Day there are “not a lot of spaces where young, Muslim people can meet outside of the mosque or your MSA.” The Globe described Polaroid walls, board games and Friday-through-Sunday evenings that turn the room into a “collective.” Hassan told that paper his theme was “Egyptian Community” — a welcoming third space after college, when it is easy to stick only to coworkers.

Neighbors once pushed back on later hours. Cambridge Day reported that in May 2024 the License Commission approved 10 p.m. weeknights and 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays on a 2-1 vote. For Ramadan 2025, Hassan worried about asking for 2 a.m.; the commission approved 3-0, he said, after then–City Councillor Sumbul Siddiqui offered help via Instagram. “Ramadan just has barakah,” he told the paper.

Still open, still family

As of October 2026, Luxor Cafe’s website lists 148 Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, with online ordering and catering. Contact-page and Harvard Square Business Association hours are Monday–Thursday 8 a.m.–8 p.m., Friday–Saturday 8 a.m.–11 p.m., and Sunday 8 a.m.–9 p.m. (structured data on the site sometimes shows 8–8 every day; call ahead). Phones listed include (617) 661-0904 on the contact page and HSBA listing, and (617) 841-9218 on the homepage footer. Cambridge Day said Hassan’s twin sister and younger brother work there, and his parents visit several times a week.

Hassan told Cambridge Day he felt “so blessed to make it this far and for such a strong community.” It takes a village to raise a child, he said — and “more than a village” for a café.

Planning a visit

Luxor Cafe is at 148 Mt. Auburn Street in Cambridge, a short walk from Harvard Square. Check luxorcafee.com for the current menu and hours, or call before you go for late nights, Ramadan schedules or catering. Local reporting describes the downstairs room as prayer-friendly seating; ask staff what is available that day.

Know a Muslim-owned business in Massachusetts with a story worth telling? Write to us at masshalaldirectory@gmail.com.