August 12, 2022

Meet Our Development Chef

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Hi, my name is Philip Wolfe and my path to Clover’s Development Kitchen has not necessarily been a predictable one. 

I grew up surrounded by scientists and amazing food. To my family of cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists my professional interest in food may have come as somewhat of a relief. I was a bad student; we don’t have to get into how bad, but let’s just say I was not going to be taking advantage of the tuition remission programs for which I was, in theory, eligible. When I was about 14 I started to look at college options and the idea of signing up for what looked like 4 more years of high school filled me with dread. 

It was around this time that a distant memory began to resurface; half forgotten afternoons in the 90’s spent watching PBS, and a show called Cooking Secrets of The CIA… We did not have cable in my house growing up. I thought everyone came home from school and straight into a lineup of Julia Child, Jaques Pepin, and Jim Lehrer (as a small child I was pretty sure Julia and Jim were married, she cooked and he talked about whatever happened in the world that day; made sense to 5 year-old Phil). Anywho, after some brief googling I learned that The CIA very much still existed and was in-fact a pretty reputable culinary school. After a little more research I was sold, and within a few weeks had started an apprenticeship at a restaurant in Newtonville; skipping class to make creme brûlée and duck confit. 

A couple years later, while I was a student at The CIA my dad told me about a food truck that had appeared on MIT’s campus and from there I began following Clover as a business and source of excellent chickpea fritters. 

Since graduating from culinary school I’ve worked in a variety of foodservice operations, everything from private chef at a reclusive software developer, to 6 years as a sushi chef specializing in menu development for elaborate omakase tasting menus. When the opportunity to become part of the Clover universe appeared I could not get my application in fast enough. Coming out of the last couple years of pandemic-uncertainty I was ready for a completely new challenge and everything about the position as Clover’s Development Chef sounded amazing. Getting to work on everything from our new seasonal sandwiches to the ever-evolving box program keeps me in a creative space that is incredibly fun and engaging. 

In many ways the interdisciplinary nature of Clover feels like home in a way that no other workplace has. Clover Food Lab has always been about research and development, finding new and delicious ways to get local veggies to as many people as possible and I am so excited to have found my way into part of that. And somehow, like so many others in my family, I have ended up running a ‘lab’… 

Recent Posts

March 22, 2023
Survey Day is a tradition that harkens back to the first days of the food truck. We hand a card to everyone in line on a specific day. Then we look at the results when we’re trying to make important decisions about Clover’s future. It’s not an exact science, but it gives us good insights and keeps us from making too many assumptions : ) A big thanks from all of us for helping make Clover better!
March 15, 2023
That photo is corn fritters drizzled with maple syrup. We just started frying them up for a 2pm special – and they’re an element of our Maple Meal Box. If you head away from the city this time of year, you’ll see signs for sugar shacks, where maple sap gets boiled down into syrup and little restaurants pop up to serve pancakes, corn fritters, cider donuts, and dill pickles (to cut through the sweetness of the fresh syrup).
February 28, 2023
You’ve been asking! And finally we can announce: sunchokes are here, starting tomorrow, 3/1. Thanks to Pete’s Greens in VT for getting us local sunchokes. At breakfast we’ll be making The Sunchoke Truffle: fluffy house-baked pita, creamy truffled butter, caramelized onions, a 6.5 minute egg, and thin, crispy sunchoke slices. At lunch and dinner: The Sunchoke Mushroom: scallion-black-pepper mayo, fresh arugula, roasted crimini mushrooms, fried brined onions, and roasted sunchokes. But what IS a sunchoke?
February 27, 2023
Oh no – 2 of our favorite items are leaving the menu on Wednesday! Stop by today and tomorrow to get your last Bridgewater (lunch/dinner) and Carrot Lox (breakfast). These were both blockbuster items but the good news is they’re leaving to make room for a very special ingredient that only comes into season in ~deep winter.~ Any guesses what that could be? It starts with the letter S…
February 21, 2023
Join us this Friday for pizza (and excitement) at the HUB! If you’ve been reading for a while, you know Enzo. He worked at Clover for 9 years and is responsible for some of our best innovations (like the Japanese Sweet Potato Sandwich, or the thing we do with ninth-pans to hold up our fry timers). Enzo has always been really passionate about pizza. For the past few years he’s been working on a new kind of dough. It’s sort of foccaccia, sort of Sicilian, baked in a deep Lloyd pan.
February 15, 2023
Remember when Pushpir came into the kitchen at CloverHSQ and schooled Ayr on Northern Indian cooking? That was 2013. A different CloverHSQ than the one you visit today. But I still remember the smell of the cilantro, mint, jalapeños, and orange juice in the blender. We hadn’t smelled that exact combo before. It was so cool to see one of my culinary heroes in our kitchen.
February 9, 2023
Have you had the Medlar Sandwich yet? The star of the sandwich is a jam we make from medlars. A medlar is a fruit that grows on a tree and comes into season in the winter. You can’t eat medlars right from the tree – they have to be fermented (or “bletted” – definitely in the running for worst word ever!) in order to become delicious. We undertake that deliciousness-process at the HUB in East Cambridge. But this year there was a little mishap…
January 26, 2023
The Pizza Friday Box gave us an idea: calzones! Ayr has been making these at his house and texting us photos. They’re big and saucy and so good. Basically a stuffed pizza/turnover situation with origins in 17th century Naples.
January 13, 2023
Thanks all who joined for the first public food dev meeting after Covid. Phil did a great job pulling it all together. If you’re a customer, farmer, vendor (or Clover staff member) reading this, you are invited to Food Dev! These happen Thursday afternoons at the HUB and they’re where all new food ideas are born. Just make sure to sign up – spots are limited.
January 5, 2023
House-made carrot lox, hearty vegetable stews with bread and pickles, Tunisian breakfast bowls, a pizza party kit, and a dream of snow, all in one box. Our Snowed In Box is back. This was Greg’s idea back in 2020. He thought it would be cool to make a box that was equally whether eaten after snowboarding or cozied up on the couch watching a movie.
December 21, 2022
We’ve been getting a lot of requests for the ability to gift a friend Clover Meal Boxes. After a lot of late night tech sessions, we have a way to do this! Yay! I’ve been looking and seeing a few of you have started to discover this feature and are starting to gift away. So cool to see.
December 16, 2022
If you’re a weekly meal box subscriber, you may have noticed way fewer plastic containers in your deliveries recently.When we started the program, we were in the pandemic, new to this whole home delivery thing, and a big concern was making sure that nothing spilled inside the boxes. So we relied on post-consumer recycled containers (aka plastic deli containers) for a lot of the items.