Matthew Gaudet Returns to Cambridge This Spring With Freepoint Kitchen & Cocktails

The former West Bridge chef is also behind the North Shore's SuperFine Food.

By Jacqueline Cain· 2/21/2017, 12:37 p.m.

Shakshuka at Freepoint Kitchen & Cocktails photo proovided / Matthew Gaudet photo by Hugh Galdones Photography

UPDATE, Friday, April 14, 1:30 p.m.: Freepoint Kitchen & Cocktails opens inside the brand new Freepoint Hotel on Wednesday, April 19. Chef Matthew Gaudet’s new restaurant will be open daily from 7-11 a.m. for breakfast, and 5 p.m.-midnight for dinner.

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If you’ve been craving Matthew Gaudet’s food since he shuttered West Bridge in 2015, taking a trip to his North Shore restaurant to get your fix will soon no longer be requisite. Gaudet returns to Cambridge this spring with Freepoint Kitchen & Cocktails, the lobby restaurant of the soon-to-open Freepoint Hotel.

Gaudent is partnering with the new, independent hotel, opening in April on Alewife Brook Parkway. He’ll serve both breakfast and dinner, with a globally inspired pantry. Mornings will feature hearty plates for visitors and the commuting crowd, like shakshuka with chorizo, tomatoes, sweet peppers, and chèvre; a raspberry vanilla buttermilk Dutch baby; and a miso green veggie breakfast bowl with quinoa, halloumi, and a poached egg.

Dinner offers small plates and other shareable dishes. The former Food & Wine Best New Chef will serve up a house-roasted pork Cubano; Irish whiskey-cured salmon with sambal date sauce, marinated cucumber, watercress, toasted rye; and green harissa-braised chicken with wild rice and labneh. Bar snacks in the works include bacon-roasted nuts, and pistachio popcorn, and Freepoint will also have charcuterie.

West Bridge alum Alex Howell is re-joining forces with Gaudet to create the beverage program, rooted in bourbon. There will be a Manhattan menu with eight different varieties, including a house version with Old Overholt Rye, and a build-your-own option, but the bar isn’t limited to brown liquors. Expect other modern interpretations of classics on the list, inspired by providing comfort for travelers. Both the kitchen and bar plan to source products locally.

The hotel is envisioned by Dash Design, which recently renovated Hotel Commonwealth in Kenmore Square. The Freepoint lobby has a 13-seat, live-edge sugar maple bar in the center, with crimson bar stools around it as a nod to nearby Harvard University. A loungey space lends itself to casual after-work dining and imbibing, with eclectic furniture including a chesterfield sofa and communal high-top tables, and a pool table.

There will be more traditional dining space, too, with banquettes along the righthand-side wall, leather sling-back chairs, and more formal seating. Outside, there will be an open-air atrium dubbed the “Secret Garden,” with fire pits, upholstered outdoor seating, and greenery and birch trees.

Gaudet is keeping busy: He is also planning to open a second location of SuperFine Food in Marblehead later this year. But first, he’ll debut this new, Cantabrigian concept. Freepoint Kitchen & Cocktails debuts in conjunction with the new hotel on April 1. It will serve breakfast daily from 7-11 a.m., and dinner nightly from 5-11 p.m.

Freepoint Kitchen & Cocktails, coming April 1 to the Freepoint Hotel, 220 Alewife Brook Parkway, West Cambridge, 617-491-8000, freepointhotel.com.