Men wearing dark suits and rectangular, thick-framed glasses enter Firebrand Saints, a Kendall Square restaurant that opened in the fall. According to their uniform, they are either architects or agents from a European version of “The Matrix.’’ At the next table, friends are buttoned into vintage dresses and worn plaid shirts, their exposed skin a doodle pad of esoteric tattoos. The air is thick with irony and intellect. Chefs are at work in an open kitchen. A burly sweetheart of a bartender makes Old Fashioneds. Over the bar, a video installation airs on a row of televisions. The first screen shows an old British movie, while the others display and remix words from the film. On one wall, a house is being sketched in light beside a tree, an art installation that draws images from Google Street View. Another wall is covered in work by graffiti artists. Tables are made from old truck hoods. In the women’s room, the customary message commanding employees to wash their hands is written in Japanese.
At Firebrand Saints, technology steals the spotlight
Dining Out
Firebrand Saints is the restaurant most likely to be the birthplace of the latest Internet meme, to host a conversation where people speak in hashtags, to inspire a satirical television show called “Cantabrigia.’’ A collaboration between MIT and restaurateur Gary Strack of long-lived favorite Central Kitchen, it is trying to do something genuinely interesting - bring art and technology into a culinary environment. It should be a natural alliance, judging from Harvard’s successful Science and Cooking lectures, molecular gastronomy, the curiosity of chefs and bartenders when it comes to new methods and ingredients. But Firebrand Saints is so concerned with the trappings, it fails to focus on the food.
The menu doesn’t express the spirit of experimentation one might expect. It centers on old-school rotisserie, with meats from naturally fed, humanely raised animals appearing in dishes such as a Roman-style porchetta plate. The sliced pork is dry, listless beside accompaniments of polenta and kale.
A “French Dip’’ sandwich au jus is in quotation marks for a reason. There is neither dipping nor jus. “It’s incorporated into the sandwich,’’ our server explains. Very well incorporated. The bun acts as a sponge, sopping up any liquid that may have once graced the roast beef. French Dip is a sandwich ripe for revival, the kind of meaty, retro fare restaurants all over town are embracing (see: beef Wellington). Someone else will do it better.
Anyone who regularly roasts chickens will be dismayed to see the spit-roasted lemon-sage bird set down before them at Firebrand Saints, flabby-skinned rather than crisped, beside a confusing medley of black olive mashed potatoes, capers, and leeks.