A hotel cafe room that has earlier been household to two well-regarded Italian dining places will welcome a further: A restaurant tentatively identified as Bar Enza is established to open up at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge’s Harvard Square in September, having about the former Benedetto and Rialto place.
At the helm is acclaimed chef Mark Ladner, a name that may possibly be common to those who’ve explored New York’s dining scene in the before 2000s — he labored in Mario Batali, Joe Bastianich, and Lidia Bastianich’s cafe empire from 1998 to 2017, most notably as govt chef at Del Posto. There, he led the restaurant to earn 4 stars from The New York Moments, not to mention a Michelin star. Almost a year prior to Batali’s extremely public downfall, Ladner ended his extensive vocation with the restaurant group to open up quick-casual cafe Pasta Flyer.
The forthcoming Cambridge restaurant, as Boston magazine experiences, will provide pasta, steak, and Italian snacks Ladner instructed the magazine that it will be an “Italian version of a brasserie.” It’s a partnership with the Lyons Team, powering Again Bay French brasserie Rochambeau and quite a few other area venues.
Whilst Boston’s placing up with a whole lot of New York dining establishments coming into town currently — see Big Food stuff Team Blue Ribbon Team — Ladner is as a great deal a Bostonian as he is a New Yorker, if not additional so. The Belmont, Massachusetts, indigenous bought his culinary start out ideal in Harvard Sq. as a teen at a pizzeria, afterwards doing the job at Todd English’s Olives, a formative cafe knowledge for so quite a few significant-identify Boston chefs, which include restaurateur Barbara Lynch. Harvard Square also obtained a rapid style of his fast-everyday Pasta Flyer in a pop-up back again in 2014, a couple of many years ahead of the cafe opened (and shut) in New York.
At Del Posto, Ladner was recognised in certain for his epic 100-layer lasagna, a Princess and the Pea-impressed creation that melds Italian lasagna (béchamel, no tomatoes, no ricotta) with the Italian-American edition (loads of tomato and lots of ricotta) by combining a regular Bolognese sauce with gentle marinara and béchamel.
At the restaurant tentatively referred to as Bar Enza, the lasagna will reportedly make an visual appeal, along with antipasti other pastas bar treats and cocktails steak showcasing Massachusetts-elevated, grass-fed beef and much more.
The foreseeable future Bar Enza area at the Charles Hotel has Italian food in its veins: Jody Adams’s Rialto shut there in 2016 after over two decades. Then, chef Michael Pagliarini and his workforce from outstanding Italian cafe Giulia, also in Cambridge, opened Benedetto at the finish of 2016. Benedetto was lower short by the pandemic, closing in 2021, but it earned rave opinions through its 5-12 months span.
Remain tuned for updates as Mark Ladner’s Bar Enza methods an opening day, likely as shortly as September.
• One of the Country’s Most Acclaimed Cooks Is Coming to Cambridge [BM]
• Mark Ladner to Go away Del Posto [ENY]
• The 100 Layer Lasagne at Del Posto in NYC [E]