Two sets of brothers saw a need for all-day breakfast food and organic hamburgers in Bethesda.
So with the blessing of a local property owner, they started the Green Eggs and Burgers food stand (a play on the title of the best-selling Dr. Seuss book) in an underused parking lot on Rugby Avenue, across the street from the Palisades apartment complex.
Two days into what co-owner “Richie Rich” Lal described as the operation’s soft-opening, the stand has garnered a number of customers from nearby office buildings on the north end of Woodmont Triangle. Lal and his crew, which includes his brother Raj and his cousins Issa Noorestani and Edrees Noorestani, ran out of a few items during the lunch rush on Wednesday.
“We’ve had a great response so far,” Lal said. “We canvassed all the buildings and people were like, ‘Oh, you guys are saviors. Promise me you’re gonna stay here.’”
For the immediate future, the operation won’t be going anywhere. Lal, a Fairfax, Va., resident, said the group couldn’t get Montgomery County permits for a portable food truck, so they settled on the stand which is permitted for the Rugby Avenue location only.
Lal said Issa Noorestani was a partner with a kabob food truck in Washington, D.C., before heading off to college at Penn State. When he got back to the area, the group got together to form their own business and Bethesda was immediately appealing.
“Bethesda is the next growing market,” Lal said. “Obviously, this is a booming area. The clientele is good. We just figured D.C. is full. D.C. is literally saturated with food trucks. We figured let’s do something different.”
The stand serves a variety of burgers using organic beef and produce and breakfast favorites, like french toast. Lal hopes the stand can lead into a food truck or even a brick-and-mortar establishment. The group is on the short list for a food truck license in D.C.
And Lal is well aware of the simmering conflict between Bethesda brick-and-mortars and food trucks, part of the reason why a group of Montgomery County’s most prominent truck owners got together for a first-ever informal meeting last month.
The Jaffe Group, which owns the lot and the nearby office building, connected with Lal to use the lot until it’s sold and redeveloped, potentially into a Class A medical or office building.
Lal is trying to get the word out through the usual social media means, but don’t be surprised to see a walking cow mascot handing out cards in Bethesda in the next few weeks. A smiling cow holding a hamburger is part of Green Eggs and Burgers’ logo, displayed on the bright yellow food stand.
“Yellow makes people hungry,” Lal said. “We had to go with yellow.”
