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 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
31 October, 2008: I’m going to figure out how to have the menu pictures post to the sidebar. And I’m going to start doing this everything evening, the day before. For now they will be in the main-body, and I’m afraid, are the day after (not before). This was our Halloween menu. We served from 11:45am (our earliest start time… 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
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
8 October, 2008: This might sound funny, but this logo is from a dream. Don’t worry, we’re not going to use it. But I thought the story was funny enough to share: I guess I’ve been a bit anxious about logos. So last night I was dreaming that I was at this place where they had an old Clover coffee… 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
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
5 September, 2008: … but if I don’t write it down I’ll forget everything. And I know this will be useful to others someday. I was always skeptical when people said things like “you’re going to have to deal with licensing” as though it was a huge hurdle. I was wrong. Here’s a summary of the city and state licensing… Read More
7 September, 2018: What’s up with the sepia? This is the first in a series of re-posts from Year One. We’ll be posting in chronological order leading up to our 10th birthday on 10/29/18. Did we mention we’re trying to hit 10k Instagram followers in time for our birthday? If we do, our prices will roll back in time 10 years.… Read More