Eagerly Awaited Verveine Cafe & Bakery Opens in Cambridge

Photo by Brooke Elmore

With summer around the corner, here’s hoping you have a packed itinerary of culinary travels. But if that’s not in the cards, head over to the highly anticipated Verveine Cafe & Bakery, which opened earlier this month in Cambridge, to get your fill of international plates without the passport. Verveine offers breakfast, lunch, and a handful of all-day bites including pizzas, as well as coffee and tea from Fieldstone Coffee Roasters. Then, there are the first-class pastries: carrot hazelnut date muffins; danishes with kimchi, egg, and cheddar; black sesame financier with sesame procured from Osaka, Japan.

The petite 24-seat spot is a bit of a return trip for chef/restaurateur Ken Oringer and acclaimed pastry chef (and Best of Boston winner) Monica Glass, who cut her teeth at some of New York City’s most lauded restaurants, like Eric Ripert’s Le Bernardin. Oringer—the force behind the well-loved Toro, Uni, Coppa, Faccia a Faccia, and Verveine’s neighbor Little Donkey—has worked with Glass at Uni and now-shuttered Clio, starting about ten years back. There, she whipped up sublime desserts like juniper crème fraiche panna cotta with grapefruit rose sorbet and olive donuts with meter lemon cream—and it’s unsurprising that she won the Food Network’s Chopped Sweets championship in 2021. Luckily, though, Glass is venturing beyond just sweets for this partnership with Oringer.

Photo by Brooke Elmore

Past the front doors, in a dining room designed with Joe Stromer of Joe the Architect and Tyler Youngblood of Niemitz Design Group, the cafe whisks diners from Mass Ave. to the French countryside, with soothing earth tones and warm and weathered textures. The team salvaged wood to transform into a showpiece of a central table, surrounded by vintage school seats from France. Plenty of greenery adds life to the space, echoing the shades of moss in the décor. Glass serves items on her grandparents’ vintage plates, adding to the worldly charm.

“For me, the international style evokes a French sensibility, which we were both trained on,” says Oringer, whose daughter Verveine inspired the bakery’s name. Yes, the French flair is there. Take the gougeres, three small savory pastries served with French comte cheese and parma prosciutto, plus the spinach and gruyere quiche. And the simple but beautiful pain au levain which joins other breads and biscuits that Glass developed to be gluten-free using a flour blend called WLDFLR that she’s soon bringing to market. Plus, the focus on simple, pristine ingredients, like in one of Glass’s favorite offerings. “My favorite all day item is the jambon and beurre,” she says. “It’s a ham and butter sandwich that reminds me of my time studying abroad and living in Marseille.”

Photo by Brooke Elmore

Good thing that Glass and Oringer’s culinary compass points to farther shores, though, or else diners wouldn’t have a chance to dig into plates like chicken shawarma with roasted garlic aioli, Guindilla peppers and apricot-habanero chutney. The hot Italian sandwich with soppressata, mortadella and provolone sees an upgrade with a green-olive tapenade slathered on house-made sourdough ciabatta. And the must-try shrimp katsu sandwich features a spicy and savory tonkatsu sauce and kewpie mayo atop a panko-crusted patty, cut with a bright apple-fennel slaw on fluffy and slightly sweet Japanese milk bread.

“I love the roasted veggie sandwich. I have a lot of vegetarian friends, and when we get sandwiches, [their options] often feel like an afterthought,” Glass adds. “I wanted to come up with something hearty and creative, with a lot of thought and love behind it.” That one features harissa-roasted carrots, plus a Middle Eastern condiment called dukkah, with Verveine’s version made with hazelnuts.

Photo by Brooke Elmore

Another of Glass’s favorites, the Moni’s spicy chili biscuit breakfast sandwich, thankfully flies all over the map. A little southern, thanks to the biscuit. A little Mexican, with a zippy chili jam mellowed out by avocado. “This biscuit is one of my classic recipes—something I’ve been making for years,” Glass says. “I also love the combination of sweet and salty with the spicy chili jam.”

Touchdown at the communal table and stay a while or grab some bites and go—but do dig into the masterful brownies, earthy flavored boosted by ube, a purple yam native to Southeast Asia. And the bibingka, a traditional rice cake from the Philippines that’s topped with a savory-sweet, salted coconut milk jam. Those alone are worth racking up lots of frequent flier miles on return trips to Verveine.

298 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, 617-395-3125, verveinecafe.com; weekdays, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.; weekends 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Photo by Brooke Elmore

Photo by Brooke Elmore

Photo by Brooke Elmore

Photo by Brooke Elmore