16 October, 2018: The past 3 Sunday evenings I’ve gotten a knock on the door. It’s Paw Paw for Clover! I get bushels of paw paw delivered at my house. I put them in the back of my car and bring them into Clover. And we’ve been sampling them at the restaurants. Look for them today. Paw what? If you… Read More
12 October, 2018: Setting up our own pita oven was sooooo painful. But we knew we could serve better tasting pita than what we were buying from Brooklyn and NJ. Why did we think we could do a better job? I’m starting to understand flavor as nutrition. And we can make more flavorful bread by using more nutritious ingredients. We can… Read More
10 October, 2018: Enjoy this time-traveling post, from October 2008, when Ayr was first developing the logo for the “Clover Food Lab.” As you may have noticed, the logo strayed quite far from this original idea, although you might notice the descendants of this logo appearing here and there at Clover. Read on, and be sure to join us on 10/29/18 for birthday… Read More
5 August, 2008: Moving away from graphic references to designing the space, here are some thoughts I’ve had about the feelings I’m looking to evoke. I’m really excited about the truck design, because I think a ton of this will come through thanks to John and Jinhee and everyone else helping make it happen. You should expect to see more… Read More
5 October, 2018: On our order system each item has a short acronym. So if you work at Clover and take a lot of orders you start to get to know the Chickpea Fritter as CHK and the Japanese Sweetpotato Sandwich as JSP. This past week the Japanese Sweetpotato crushed the Chickpea Fritter Sandwich in sales. And even the poor… Read More
1 October, 2018: All year people ask me when we will launch the Brussels Sprout Sandwich. But right now it’s different. People are getting emails from our competitors telling them that Brussels are on the menu. They are hitting instagram feeds. Brussels aren’t in season yet, not in New England. It’s really confusing when we’re approaching autumn and you get… Read More
1 October, 2018: I’m talking at Harvard tonight as part of the Food and Science class lecture series. I’m super excited. I’ve been in the audience for these lectures for years. They started in the early days of Clover and Rolando, our chef at the start, turned me onto them. If you’re interested in joining the lecture is open to… Read More
27 September, 2018: Jane, Jenny and I went to Next Barn Over last week to watch the sweet potato harvest. It sounds like roots ripping, farmers laughing, boots squishing mud, iPhone cameras snapping. Quiet fields with the occasional pickup truck driving past. Some of the sweet potatoes were so big this year that the farmers were taking the kind of… Read More
24 March, 2009: There are all sorts of reasons we are happy to have popovers for breakfast: – They fit perfectly with our aspiration of being “just out of the oven” – They are simple, few ingredients (something we love at Clover) – They are indulgent, but a great alternative to croissants, or brioche. (more on this later) But honestly, we… Read More
26 September, 2018: If you received a survey card in line today, please click on this post to get to the survey link. A huge thanks for helping us improve!! Don’t forget to save the end-of-survey page to redeem for your thank-you treat from us. Click here for the Customer Survey September 2018 We’ll be closing this survey at the… Read More
26 September, 2018: This fall, everything has been coming up early. Sweet potatoes are already in. We’re launching the Japanese Sweet Potato Sandwich today (at least if you’re an app user.) And Paw Paws are coming on Tuesday. Paw Paw is a special alien fruit, never before seen in restaurants or on grocery store shelves. It’s native to the Northeast,… Read More
25 September, 2018: Harvard has a class that teaches chemistry and physics through food. There’s a public component, the Science of Cooking lecture series. I remember waiting in line with Rolando to see Harold McGee in 2011. They’ve had every major chef from around the world. This year, Ayr is speaking! He’s talking bread, and how ingredients impact flavor, texture, and… Read More
24 September, 2018: This is Rolando Robledo, Clover’s chef. We’re absolutely thrilled to have him on board. Rolando found his way to Clover by way of The French Laundry, the Waldorf, and most recently, Johnson and Wales as a professor. He’s going to be working the food truck with me full time for the first 6 weeks and we’re going… Read More
15 May, 2009: At 1pm our generator ran out of juice. we’d never had that happen before, guess we’re serving up too many sandwiches, or getting breakfast up too early, or both. With 15 customers in line we had to think fast. I thought Mike, one of our customers, might be able to run an extension cord from the shop… Read More
17 September, 2018: I think Gooseberry’s, the Asian food truck at MIT, rocks. Obviously I’m not the only one. This is the line at lunchtime. Nothing special, this is an everyday event. These people are ALL waiting for that white truck up ahead. And it’s not a very long wait, they process folks at a rate of close to 10… Read More