By 2009, the Boston Consulting Group proclaimed Kendall Square-an area roughly defined as everything within a 10-minute walk of the Kendall T station-“the most innovative square mile on earth.” But slowly pioneers, many connected to MIT, reclaimed the space, building biotech and IT companies. After the factories closed, the area became an abandoned wasteland. In the last century, the smells wafting over the neighborhood came from a gas works, a vulcanized-rubber plant, and a rendering plant that disposed of carcasses from Boston’s stockyards. “I can’t imagine a community more aligned with our mission.”Ĭafé ArtScience and Le Laboratoire are only the latest reflections of how far Kendall Square has come over the past several decades. “Here there is a sense of being a reflection of Kendall Square,” says Edwards.

After selling his company, Advanced Inhalation Research, he launched Le Laboratoire, first in Paris, where he says “we were always seen as a bit of an extraterrestrial force.” Not so in Cambridge. The space is the brainchild of David Edwards, a chemical engineer, Harvard professor, and inventor who came to Cambridge 30 years ago as a visiting graduate student at MIT. Some venture across the lobby to Le Laboratoire, a gallery space where metal objects called Ophones emit subtle scents with names like Crackling Fire and Myrrhmetal in time with a soundtrack. By five o’clock, workers from surrounding offices-Microsoft, Biogen, Google, Akamai, Facebook-are gathered at the bar for cocktails, deviled quail eggs, and hamachi crudo. The Whaf Tiki, as it’s called, is the signature concoction of Café ArtScience, a restaurant in Cambridge’s Kendall Square. It allows you to appreciate some of the subtleties of the alcohol,” she says, before pouring dark rum over the ice to complete the drink. “It’s a primer for the palate, like an amuse bouche. The goal is to crack the sugar, she explains, and quickly inhale the cachaça vapor inside. The waitress brings over a cocktail snifter with two colored ice cubes, a thin wafer of sugar covering the rim. SEE STORY ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

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