Back in the truck days there were boats. A boat was for someone who didn’t want the bread with their chickpea fritter. You took a fry boat, swiped it with hummus, and added all the ingredients in a chickpea fritter. Sometimes when we ran out of bread, all items would become boats.

Boats became platters when we opened CloverHSQ on Holyoke Street. To make a platter, we would arrange all the ingredients in the sandwich and add a few side salads. 10 years after the first chickpea boat, we have set our sights on a better version of the chickpea fritter platter. What can we do to make the platter an item in its own right?

Chris has been bringing lots of ideas to Food Dev. The falafel and hummus are the only things that are safe. We want lots of colors, lots of textures, lots of seasonal produce.

We’ve tasted babaganoush, muhammara, roasted radishes, thick crunchy carrot sticks, and yes, even…greens!  Greens were not Chris’ favorite thing to source. Most of the lettuce you get in bowls and salads around town has zero nutritional value and zero relationship to the land and was probably trucked and flown thousands of miles to get to your bowl. We’re not going to be serving that. So you’ll see us playing with hearty relatives of lettuce, and herbs, and other “non boring” greens.