27 December, 2019: A certain Area Manager said that, with excitement and joy, when I set these menus out. We have never made printed menus because our menu changes so much, sometimes by the minute, to stay in line with what’s coming out of farms. But it’s definitely been a source of frustration for customers and staff. With so many… Read More
26 December, 2019: When we took over the space occupied by Minigrow, we noticed the top third of the glass was totally blacked out. It had a Pac-Man on it with the words MEAL COMPLETE as you exit. You know we’d never let something cover up glass if we could help it, even a sweet little Pac-Man. So we decided… Read More
10 December, 2019: We did it. We opened Clover Boylston. There was a line out the door for all of lunch. A really sweet group of (hundreds) of customers. We need to do the final count, but it seems we raised well over 3.5k for Stone Barns Growing Farmers Initiative. Now the real adventure begins. We’ll be popping popovers and… Read More
13 November, 2008: Everyone keeps telling me that I need to post the menu before, not after service. It’s true. I’m going to try tomorrow to post from my iPhone in the morning. So with luck this will be the last backward looking menu. We tried an organic chickpea fritter today (sold about 10% of total chickpea orders). And we… Read More
9 December, 2019: It’s finally real. We’re opening tomorrow. Come by between 11am and 2pm and pay what you want for your lunch. We’ll be donating 100% of the sales to the Stone Barns Growing Farmers Initiative. Have you heard of Stone Barns? If you’ve seen the Chef’s Table episode on Dan Barber, you may have seen (and been inspired… Read More
3 December, 2019: On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me: one medlar bletting! Ok, that was never a lyric in the carol, but our medlars have been bletting away, and now they’re soft and sweet, ready to turn into medlar jam! The jam is rich and dark, kind of has an appley-winey thing going on.… Read More
26 November, 2019: I’m only sort of joking about the free Brussels sprouts. We do pay real $. Need some design help for the next version of our app. If you’re a freelancer with the right experience (or know somebody) we’d love to hear from you. We work in Figma. Design is driven through lots of iterative testing. We’d like… Read More
25 November, 2019: King Brussels strikes again! This time he’s decreeing that: $1 from every Brussels sprout sandwich (or platter) will be heading directly to The Food Project to fund the amazing work they do teaching teens how to farm on beautiful lively fields from Roxbury to Lincoln to Beverly to Lynn. If we can raise $1k this will fund… Read More
4 October, 2008: I spent 3 hours today with John at the MIT hobby shop, and a few hours before that collecting pieces and parts. We’re using marine plywood, it’s just like regular plywood except the glue is waterproof and will not warp, and it’s more expensive. There’s this fantastic plywood place in Somerville, Boulter Plywood. They have everything and… Read More
22 November, 2019: We got our building inspector approval. Now we’re waiting on the City of Boston licensing office. That will take 2 weeks. Then health. Then we’re open to serve. Above is a shot of the restaurant that I snapped today. Almost there! Read More
19 November, 2019: Our contractor Justin signed up for this wall drawing robot on Kickstarter. It’s called Scribit. He was thinking we might have fun with it in new restaurants. I spent too much time the other day getting it working. The robot is pretty much undocumented and it’s operation has a bunch of buggy things. BUT… it is capable… Read More
19 November, 2019: We don’t have a restaurant in NYC, this is our Boylston St. restaurant. But if you squint… and use your imagination… Lucia received this email the other day and I thought I’d share it. Startlingly simple. What a nice thing to receive. Thanks Carl! And NYC? Yes. Our next restaurants are in Boston but someday we’d love… Read More
18 November, 2019: Courtesy of King Brussels himself, and with a little help from Alana (sp?) at Brattle Square Optical. We ordered a couple thousand of these really pretty oversized laptop stickers from Sticker Mule, but they never showed up to the HUB. Chris and the team were tearing apart the HUB looking. Later we realized that they’d been sent… Read More
12 November, 2008: When a few things run out at the end of the day, that is a great thing. No waste. When everything runs out at 1:30pm, and we have to pack up early and leave it’s a bummer. Don’t get us wrong, we’re thrilled with the lines. But when I run out of food you don’t get to… Read More
17 November, 2019: I’ve been working harder than I have in years. And yet I feel like I’m failing daily. One of the things I’ve been terrible at is getting regular stories shared on the website. It’s been one of the perverse mechanics of building Clover. When the most exciting stuff is happening I spend the least amount of time… Read More