Forthcoming sibling restaurants Ames Street Deli and Study aim to offer a little something for everyone. There’ll be sit-down breakfast, lunch and dinner at Study, with a la carte, prix fixe and tasting options in the evening. And in the adjoining Ames Street Deli, you can get pastries, coffee and sandwiches by day and cocktails by night. Yes, there’s a lot going on at the Kendall Square spots from Sam Treadway, Diana Kudajarova and her husband, Tse Wei Lim, the team behind Journeyman and backbar in Somerville. But when they first began to conceive of a restaurant for the ground floor of the Broad Institute, they had only one mission in mind: sandwiches.

“We’re hoping to make the best sandwiches ever,” Kudajarova says. “We love sandwiches, but a lot of sandwich shops suffer from a lack of kitchen space. They’re crammed in tight quarters.” That won’t be an issue at Ames Street, which will share a spacious kitchen with Study—similar to how Journeyman and backbar operate out of the same space. When it opens this month, expect a menu of seven to eight creative seasonal sandwiches, like a fried broccoli offering or the Tripe on Rye, made with crispy tripe, pastrami-style beef heart and gruyere on Baltic rye bread.

But two slabs of bread can’t contain all their ambitions for Ames Street. The 40-seat space, which features a clean, modern design with Corian countertops, will undergo a dramatic transformation at about 4 pm for the after-work crowd, turning into a cocktail bar helmed by Joe Cammarata (backbar). “There’s not really a great cocktail spot in Kendall, so we thought we could make a great contribution to the neighborhood,” Kudajarova says.

The bar will also serve Study, which will offer a more refined dining experience with sit-down service for 40 and a private dining room that accommodates 35. Kudajarova promises to bring some “adventure and flair” to breakfast and lunch (hello, dessert trolley!), while dinner will showcase dishes like dry-aged duck breast with sunchokes, meyer lemon puree, meyer lemon-ginger fondant, and sunflower sprouts and seeds. With a la carte offerings and a four-course prix fixe that will likely be priced around $50, Study is positioned to be more of a spot for regulars than the tasting-focused Journeyman, which will transition to a $65-$95 ticketing system in November. But the price point isn’t the only difference between the Journeyman/backbar and Ames Street/Study duos.

“There’s a huge, bright storefront for Ames Street, so it’s very hard for us to be hidden,” Kudajarova says. “For Journeyman and backbar, part of the charm is they’re tucked away, but we really wanted Ames Street Deli and Study to be part of the neighborhood.”

Ames Street Deli and Study 73 Ames St., Cambridge (617-374-0701) amesstreetdeli.com (617-374-0700) studyrestaurant.com

Ames Street Deli and Study


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