We had no idea what the word Panelle meant when a customer first told us about it ten years ago. This customer grew up in Sicily, the triangular island south of mainland Italy. His mom would make a snack for him after school – a kind of savory cake called panelle! Crispy on the outside, creamy and custardy on the inside. Made from chickpea flour – what?!

About a year and a half ago, at an open-to-the-public food development meeting at Clover, we blind taste-tested a new plant-based pulled pork. This wasn’t a totally new thing for us to do—as a company with a climate mission, we tend to get a lot of samples of plant-based everything, and we love trying all of them. We’ve tried mycelium-based mushroom meats, wheat-and-soy nuggets, and burgers made from kelp. One bite in, and it was clear this pulled pork was special.

I’ve recently asked somebody who believes in Clover as much as I do to step into the CEO role. Julia Wrin Piper has been Clover’s COO for the past 18 months and will take over running the company day-to-day. I’ll be shifting my efforts to provide support for Julia and the team, work on growth opportunities, and pursue partnerships that will amplify Clover’s mission. I’ll remain a member of the Board of Directors and active as an advisor and mentor. Clover is facing a potent mix of opportunity and challenge right now and I know Julia is exactly the right person to lead the team through these twists and turns.

Our Clover restaurant at Copley Square, the one we call CloverBBY (Back Bay) is closing immediately. I’m pretty sad and really shook up, and just bummed. This is the second Clover we’ve ever closed, the first was in Brookline Village. That one was peaceful. This one is violent and really stressful. We signed the lease for CloverBBY in 2019, taking over from a failed outpost of Honeygrow. The space was newly renovated, our neighbor Dig Inn was doing $5m a year in sales (or so we’d been told) and we all expected this to rocket to be our busiest, highest volume restaurant ever…

Yesterday was Jason’s last day at Clover. Jason came on board as our executive chef last year. His job was to develop recipes for our meal box program, so if you’re a member of Taco, Pasta, Burger, or Soup, you’ve likely been enjoying some food from Chef Bond.

We all spend so much energy figuring out how to get from where we are to the next place. And at Clover that feels like such an imperative. Clover is trying each day to solve this existential challenge we face: Global warming.

Food Dev is an internal meeting. People huddle around a prep table with all sorts of hustle and bustle around us. We invite the public. We do this every Tuesday at 3pm, and we taste new ideas.

It’s actually a take on a sandwich we had on the menu back in 2010. Ayr’s dad used to make a mushroom pâté, baked in a fancy French pastry crust.