Kendall Square will soon become home to a brick-and-mortar version of Clover Food Lab, months after all of the company’s restaurants and food trucks were closed following a salmonella outbreak.
The new location at 5 Cambridge Center, a building owned by Boston Properties that also houses tenants such as Google and Legal Sea Foods, will have capacity for 62 people and 24 seasonal patio seats, according to the Cambridge Licensing Commission. Hours will be from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week.
The location marks a move back to where the company got its start-Clover Founder Ayr Muir received a degree in material science from MIT in 2000. He opened the first truck in the Kendall area in 2008 before expanding deeper into Cambridge and Boston.
Clover Food Lab now has two locations in Cambridge, in Harvard Square and East Cambridge, as well as brick-and-mortar restaurants in Brookline Village and Burlington and several food trucks around the Boston area.
Details about the new location were made available when manager Thomas Cancelliere applied for a malt beverage license with the Cambridge Licensing Commission.
Plans for new locations on Newbury Street and in Alewife have been postponed, according to the company’s website. A Newbury Street restaurant is pending permits, while the Alewife location was scrapped due to other time commitments.
The new location comes after all Clover restaurants and food trucks were shut down in July by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and remained closed for close to two weeks after a dozen cases of salmonella were reported.
Clover CEO Ayr Muir told the Cambridge Chronicle at the time that they voluntarily closed and that the business had never been a source of food poisoning, as far as he was aware.
"This is something we take very seriously. Clover has never been responsible for any food poisoning or food-borne illness that we know of. That’s because we operate clean and take this sort of thing really really seriously," wrote Muir on the company’s website.
Documents obtained from the Cambridge Inspectional Services Department showed that the Holyoke Street location had been named in the food history report of a 23-year-old man who filed a Cambridge Foodborne Illness Complaint in 2011. Other locations had been previously cited by the Department of Public Health.
The restaurants reopened on July 25 after a second inspection.
An opening date for the Kendall Square location has yet to be set. Representatives from Clover Food Lab did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.
