Bom Dough is a worthy successor to the East Coast Grill
Where to: Bom Dough in Inman Square’s old East Coast Grill space. Once a neon-strobed mashup of fun house and tropical hideaway, now it’s an all-day bakery that looks like a Berkshires yoga studio, with lush horticulture and white-washed brick. Times have changed.
Why: For doughy delights that are truly the bomb.
The backstory: Owner Marcia Chemim grew up in Somerville, walking past the East Coast Grill and, later, Highland Fried. She got her culinary start peddling ice pops at farmers’ markets in Kendall Square.
“I never went to [cooking] school, but it’s something I’ve always been passionate about with flavor, especially from my culture,” she says.
Chemim is a mere 25, which may seem young to own a restaurant — but luck intervened. She and her fiancée were considering a move to California and traveled there to suss out the icepop business. Disillusioned, they returned to Massachusetts and resolved to open a restaurant here. Chemim set an alert on her phone for rental spaces, and the Inman Square location popped up not long after their return.
“I was able to talk to the landlord, and I think they liked our story. They liked how young I am. The landlord had met Chris [Schlesinger] from East Coast Grill, the famous chef. I think I inspired him because Chris, when he started, was really young. So I think it was something that he felt good about. He wanted to give me an opportunity,” she says.
What to eat: “Bom” means “good” in Portuguese, and this dough is extremely good. Gluten-free cheese bread, pão de queijo, is the signature item.
“It’s something I’ve always been passionate about making, and it’s one of my favorite things to eat, but this isn’t really a Brazilian bakery,” she says. “I’m using Brazilian-inspired flavors from my own culture and adding to it, doing fusions, because Brazil is a melting pot. We have a lot of Italians, Japanese, and Germans in Brazil. [The menu] is a true fusion of everything.”
Bakers arrive by 6 a.m. each morning; food is made to order, and most every breakfast and lunch item incorporates dough.
Cheese bread is nutty and fluffy, made with cassava flour, Parmesan, and mozzarella: Imagine an airer gougère. Order it plain or with pesto, garlic, guava, bacon, or a side of soft scrambled eggs whipped with cream and butter, not milk. Miso soup is tart and bright, full of scallions. A side of french fries with a green-onion-scented garlic aioli is shamelessly odiferous and divine. Spinach and short rib pot pie is like eating spinach dip inside a crackly, steaming puff pastry; it is a ski lodge in crust form. The sleeper hit is flatbread topped with shredded chicken stewed in tomato sauce, green olives, and squiggly tubes of catupiry, a soft, heavy Brazilian cheese that’s kind of like sour cream’s racier cousin. It’s as big as a canoe and easily serves two.
“Unlike in America, it’s really a luxury to eat pizza in Brazil. You need to eat it with a fork and knife,” Chemim says. Get yours with a side of thin, hot (very hot!) sauce. An homage to the ECG Hell Nights of yore, perhaps?
Almost everything is $15 and under, and most items come with sides: Caesar salad, fries, bacon.
What to drink: Fazenda coffees, Rhode Island-based Luluna Kombucha, matcha lattes, hibiscus coolers.
The takeaway: Quirky and very satisfying, with a menu that’s impossible to pigeonhole — sort of like the East Coast Grill used to be.
Bom Dough, 1271 Cambridge St., Cambridge, 617-945-1179, www.bomdough.com