Cambridge: Area Four Pizza
See it on One for the Table's Boston ReviewsLet's Eat by Kitty Kaufman, photos by Dilusha+Damnath De Tissera

It's inauguration Monday. Neither bison nor lobster's on our Cambridge menu but we're celebrating. The first place is "not doing lunch today," so around the corner we go to the second where I'm greeted, "Do you have a reservation?" It's 11:30 and if I'd brought a cannon we could set it off. Wisely, we move on next door to Area Four: bakery, bar and restaurant. Le bébé's eyes light up. Ours too.
It's busy. We opt for pulled pork and two pizzas. The pork sandwich comes piled high with arugula on a soft bun you scrunch to inhale with special sauce. Best of all, the pickles, peppers and pearl onion side is delivered in a cast iron frying pan that's all of two inches wide.


The bar starts with beer slanting local: Slumbrew Happy Sol (MA), CBC Big Man IPA (MA), Allagash Black Belgian Stout (ME), Smuttynose Winter Ale (NH), Tap Sassy Rabbit (MA), Idle Hands Pandora (MA). Wines are eco-friendly on tap: Adami prosecco, New York Empire Riesling, Silvertap Zin from CA, New York North Fork Blend, Ross Chardonnay, and Guintrandy Rhone from France. Thirty whiskeys and cocktails come with a dash of wicked: Rhubarbie doll, Just dill with it, Italian babysitter, White boy Manhattan, Dark and stormier, the Sazerac, and Donkey show with tequila, Campari and grapefruit. With those malts, they won't be known as a wine bar and that's fine. If I lived here, I'd be home now.

This part of Cambridge, Kendall Square, was once a collection of empty lots and abandoned buildings. One day in another lifetime we were looking for a die maker. I got out of the car and went to open the door on a rickety building. It was just a shell and beyond the door there was nothing. My brother laughed his head off. Some time later, Michael Feinstein came to the MIT bookstore in celebration of a new album. It's before he was Michael Feinstein and what he did was play a grand piano outside in the courtyard to an audience of five. It's before Area Four, Legal, before EVOO and Tatte, the Marriott, the movie theatre, and way before MIT sued Frank Gehry over the Stata Center's flaws.
Area Four is pure Cambridge: comfortable, affordable and unpretentiously chic in a way that will make you feel smarter than you are.
Area Four
300 Technology Square
Cambridge, MA 02139
617. 758. 4444
© February 18, 2013 for One for the Table
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Kitty@corp-edge.com
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Italian Western

Fine kettle of fish

Food, and art

Red hot and blue

Yes, we have no meatballs

Meatballs and calamari in Roslindale

Pon cooks with fire

Happy, happy new year

New York state of mind

Industry standard

Ta dah

Eat dessert first