Clover Food Lab

Service was fast and super friendly! The rosemary fries were perfection. Also really enjoyed my chickpea fritter sandwich. My friend liked the Nashville hot mushroom sandwich but her mouth was definitely feelin’ the heat 😂 The ginger lemonade was a tad too strong for my liking initially, but once the ice melted and diluted it a bit I found it refreshing.

A lot of vegetarian options. The regular egg sandwich (softboiled egg, cheese, tomato, untoasted pita) was painfully unremarkable and under seasoned, but the popover sandwhich showed off a nice use of soy-cured (?) tempeh as a meat substitute. Coffee options were impressive with a number of well-regarded Northeastern roasters (George Howell, Little Wolf, Tandem, Speedwell) available on pour over or as bags.

Prompt service and good food! We tried the seasonal mushroom parm : fresh ingredients, good portions, affordable price, and tasty! Although we were not a big fan of their popular Rosemary fries.. they were oily and mildly flavored. Loved that everything used to serve (including the plastics) are compostable.

Clover Food Lab is a cool café and coffee shop near Harvard Square. I stopped in recently for a coffee and a muffin. The wait in line was a bit long, but the area was quite busy. I had the house-made mole syrup with my coffee and a cornbread muffin. Both were excellent. I definitely hope to be back and try more things. This is a great spot!

I really do wanna give this place the benefit of the doubt considering all of the great things I've heard about it -- maybe it was just an off day? Anyhow, I was a bit disappointed by my food. My tortilla soup was very sour and bitter, oddly enough. I might have been given the wrong soup in all honesty, it was dark brown, almost black in color and didn't have any tomatoes in it. It was more akin to black bean soup although, again, it was very off-tasting, even for possibly being a different soup. It also came with pita bread, which wasn't half bad, but it couldn't really bring up the enjoyment level of the soup. It's a cute restaurant, and maybe the other locations are better, but I do wish this place lived up to the hype. Edit: Looks like I was given the "shiitake chowder" instead, as the tortilla soup is sold out. While I'm glad I now know that's not what the tortilla soup is like, I would've appreciated being told that so that I could have ordered something else instead. And hey, thank god I'm not allergic to mushrooms.