Snack Attack: Mushroom Scrapple Sandwich at Clover Food Lab

Mushroom scrapple sandwich at Clover. / Photo by Lucia Jazayeri

If you’re in search of a stellar meatless sandwich, Clover Food Lab has you covered. If you’re craving heaps of scrapple, well, it seems the restaurant has you covered there, too.

For the uninitiated, scrapple is a dish from the mid-Atlantic, which in essence is just a pile of pork trimmings with a bunch of spices, cornmeal, and flour thrown in. Clover’s meat-free version riffs on that popular plate in sandwich form, and features roasted crimini mushroom balls, mayo, aged cheddar, and frisée tossed with lemon juice.

The custardy result is rich, and it’s “probably the thing that most evokes meat that we’ve done to this date,” says communications director Lucia Jazayeri.

The folks at CloverHUB—the local chain’s commissary kitchen in East Cambridge—wanted to use mushrooms in a new seasonal sandwich, and they looked to scrapple for inspiration. The new ’wich will only be available at the Clover’s Harvard Square location for this trial basis. It hits the menu this Thursday, March 23, at 11 a.m.

CloverHUB’s focus is to experiment with dishes before debuting them across the restaurant’s network of shops. In addition to brainstorming new recipes, the East Cambridge incubator also hosts weekly food development meetings on Tuesdays that are open to the public. For example, the team has been testing a cold-brew chicory root coffee, and they’re trying to nail down the right amount of smokiness for a baba ganoush dish. They’re currently looking for the next great mushroom breakfast sandwich, too, if you have any ideas.

The mushroom scrapple sandwich was part of a tasting session on March 7. Certain locations can take concepts under their wing after testing, and that’s why the dish will soon be available in the Harvard area.

“The employee-customer relationships at that location are so special that we can often get really deep and accurate feedback from customers there,” Jazayeri says. Clover’s Financial District location often gets test dishes, too, she adds.

The Harvard store will have the scrapple sandwich for one week, or until the ingredients are gone, so stop by and to give it a try.

Clover Food Lab, 1326 Mass Ave., Cambridge, 617-395-0240, cloverfoodlab.com.