One of the latest dining experiences in the Boston area is Café ArtScience, an experimental eatery that blends design, science and cuisine into a one-of-a-kind hangout for local intellectuals. Created in conjunction with the Paris-based art and design center, Le Laboratoire, Café ArtScience is located between Harvard and MIT so as to be accessible to some of the most forward-thinking scientific minds in the country.
Award-winning French designer Mathieu Lehanneur created the space to be both comfortable and intellectually stimulating with an open floor plan, green velvet couches, a hexagon motif (used as a subtle nod to the communal intelligence of bees) and a design flow that he hopes will spur intellectual conversations amongst local minds. “The greatest innovations and discoveries have rarely taken shape behind a desk. Archimedes was in his bath, Newton beneath an apple tree and Steve Jobs in a garage,” Lehanneur explained. “Café ArtScience would have put these three great minds on the same sofa!”
The culinary aspects of the restaurant are led by David Edwards, an American scientist and Harvard professor, who invented inhalable chocolate, and Chef Patrick Campbell previously of Eastern Standard. Bartender Todd Maul serves up experimental concoctions, simple cocktails and vapor spirits courtesy of Edwards’ invention that allows guests to “drink” the alcoholic gasses through a straw-like device.
The menu consists of fine dining options with a scientific twist like roasted bone marrow with escargots and pork belly rillons; bone-in Rhode Island fluke with potato, crosnes (Chinese artichokes), and birch emulsion; and huckleberry and lime creamsicle with ras el hanout sponge cake, frosted amaranth, and candied rose petals.
