ArtScience Culture Lab & Café

One day, the United Nations is going to select a group of elite scientists, train them for space travel, and send them to farthest reaches of the universe, where they’ll conduct a series of experiments in hopes of creating bionic humans who will be able to leap over tall buildings, read an unabridged copy of Moby Dick in 10 minutes, and always remember to charge their phones overnight. Assuming that spaceship will have a restaurant, it’s going to look a lot like ArtScience in Kendall Square.

This place calls itself a food laboratory, serving up supposedly experimental French-ish stuff in a space that feels very much like a Kendall Square pharma lab. The food itself is pretty mediocre (and from what we can tell, not very experimental) but the cocktails are outstanding and worth a trip on their own - whimsical, flavorful drinks you’ll want to take a picture of even if you’re not the type of person who takes pictures of food. We highly recommend the pikka, a mix of scotch, alpine herbs, lychee foam, and other good stuff that is served in a bowl.