scorecardresearch Skip to main content
TABLES

Cafe ArtScience to become Senses, new from Harvard professor David Edwards with collaboration from Jody Adams

Restaurant news you can use.

Cafe ArtScience has closed.Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe

Closings: No more bao for now: Tom’s BaoBao in Harvard Square (84 Winthrop St. at John F. Kennedy Street) has closed, confirms chief operating officer Rosamond Lu.

It opened in 2016 as the first international location of owner Tom Tong’s bao concept, GanQiShi, where Tong and his team serve nearly 250,000 bao a day at more than 200 branches throughout China.

The restaurant’s bao artisans were originally known as “baoists” and apprenticed for a minimum of three months to perfect their technique — including making sure to include 16 to 22 hand-pinched pleats in each bao, stuffed with pork, curry beef, lobster, and more.

Advertisement



Tom's BaoBao in Harvard Square featured bamboo-steamed baozi made fresh. Lane Turner

Reinventions: Down the road, Kendall Square’s Café ArtScience (650 E. Kendall St. at Linskey Way) is no more, confirms founder David Edwards. The restaurant opened in 2014, the brainchild of inventor Edwards, known for creating (among other things) the WikiPearl, a pod of ice cream enveloped in edible, flavored skin. He is also an engineering professor at Harvard. The restaurant pushed the boundaries of dining and drinking, combining oddities such as inhalable cocktails with familiar dishes such as roast chicken and poached salmon.

In April, Edwards will open a new restaurant, Senses, in the same space. He calls restaurateur Jody Adams (Porto, Saloniki, Trade, and formerly Rialto) a “thought collaborator” in the process.

“Senses will be a casual fine-dining Mediterranean restaurant, open for lunch and dinner, with a remarkable chef moving to Cambridge from Europe. Jody Adams is a close friend and thought collaborator in Senses. We both care about the future of food and great restaurants. She will be consulting and may get involved in Senses programming,” he says.

Pop-ups: The Seaport’s Snowport Winter Village (65 Northern Ave. at Fan Pier Boulevard) — complete with a gondola, curling, ice skating, and penguin bowling — is now home to the Waffle Cabin and a food truck from Oath Pizza. Enjoy Belgian waffles daily drizzled with chocolate (or plain), plus toasty beverages.

Advertisement



Oath Pizza will serve thin-crust pies, seared in avocado oil, Wednesdays through Sundays. Their signature? The Spicy Mother Clucker, with roasted chicken, Sriracha, and pickled onion. There’s also a kids’ menu.


Kara Baskin can be reached at kara.baskin@globe.com. Follow her @kcbaskin.