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By Matt Juul Globe Staff,Updated May 21, 2025, 4:29 a.m.

Another rockin’ Memorial Day weekend is on the horizon thanks to the Boston Calling Music Festival, which returns with a new stage, fresh lineup, and three days of fun for local music lovers. From a preview of the weather forecast to set times to everything that’s new, here’s the ultimate fan’s guide to this year’s Boston Calling.

What’s new this year?

Boston Calling has a new look for 2025. Most notably, a massive single stage is replacing the separate Red and Green stage areas that existed in past iterations of the festival. The new main stage also has the ability to rotate, so as one act performs in front of the audience, the next singer or band can prepare simultaneously backstage.

According to a press release, the rotating stage will feature “state-of-the-art sound and video,” with the redesigned festival layout aimed at “making it easier for attendees to move between performances” while mitigating crowd congestion. The changes come after last year’s Boston Calling received some fan backlash over its crowd size.

In addition to the new stage, Boston Calling will have more water stations available at the fest to keep attendees hydrated. And if you’re looking to get out of the sun (or rain) and relax, the indoor arena makes its grand return this year. While past iterations of Boston Calling have used the space for stand-up performances and even a film festival curated by Natalie Portman, this year’s fest will utilize the indoor arena to showcase performances by Berklee College of Music jazz students.

By Jeanne O’Brien Coffey May 20, 2025, 

Contrary to popular belief, the city doesn’t disappear after midnight. You can get pizza after midnight and burritos until 4 a.m. if you know where to look.

Let’s be honest – Boston has never been known as a late-night city. Last call remains at 2 a.m. – the same as when I was in college, which didn’t really matter because I had to catch the MBTA, which ceases service around 1 a.m. (This was the dark ages before ride-share services.) But that doesn’t mean we don’t know how to party – we just start early.

At 1 p.m., to be precise. That’s when the gates open at Boston Calling, the three-day Memorial Day weekend music festival that attracts more than 100,000 people to the city’s biggest party. This year, organizers tell me that a redesign of the main stage should alleviate the crowd-crunch that happened last year after Chappell Roan (I squeezed behind pop-up tents to escape the fray). This year, I’m looking forward to sets by Sheryl Crow, Remi Wolf, and Vampire Weekend – and the legendary food line-up includes Boston’s best, from Summer Shack and Flour Bakery to Dumpling Daughters and Moyzilla. Not to mention Dunks dishing out free samples of ice cream-flavored coffee drinks. Fingers crossed, the lousy weather will clear out just in time, but if you need a place to relax indoors, check out the new Arena Stage, a covered and air-conditioned space featuring music from up-and-coming Berklee College jazz musicians.

But when you are spilling out of the gates at 11 p.m., you don’t have to head straight home. In fact, don’t even try. While the ride share lot at the festival is actually pretty well-organized chaos, you don’t want to do battle with that demand pricing. And the walk to Harvard Square, which doesn’t actually disappear after midnight, is not that much longer than the walk to the ride share lot.

So chill for a while – grab a drink or a snack. Here are some prime options for late-night eats.

The Charles Hotel: It’s about a 10-minute walk from the gates to this property, making it a great home-base for the weekend. Rooms are nearly fully booked – at press time there were only five king-bed rooms remaining, at $745 a night. A much gentler option cost-wise is to park in the garage under the hotel, which maxes out at $50 for 24 hours. The hotel’s One Reason Garden Bar is hosting a block party until midnight with music, social media friendly photo ops, specialty cocktails and a late-night menu from Kured. Or cozy up at the hotel’s Noir Bar, open until 1 a.m. with French-inspired cocktails

El Jefe’s Taqueria: Whether the line was too long at this local favorite’s booth inside the festival, or you just need one more burrito heaping with Al Pastor and Mexican rice, the Harvard Square location is open until 4 a.m.

Charlie’s Kitchen: Relax in the beer garden over one of their famous double cheeseburgers until midnight at this 76-year-old spot.

Grendel’s Den: The kitchen closes at 11:30 pm, but you can drink at this snug —and historic—underground bistro until 1 a.m.

Pinocchio’s Pizza : Craving an old-school pizza? The big decision is Sicilian or thin-crust at this spot that has been slinging pies for fans (including Ben Affleck and Mark Zuckerberg) since 1966. Seating is only at a couple of small tables, but they serve until 2 a.m.

Van Leeuwen Ice Cream: Does a scoop of Brown Sugar Cookie Dough Brownie ice cream sound like just the right ending to your day? The Harvard Square location of this booming chain is open until midnight.

Story by Molly Farrar
5/20/25

Cambridge to celebrate reopening of historic Harvard Square kiosk next week© (David L Ryan/Globe Staff)

The historic kiosk and former newsstand in the middle of Harvard Square will reopen next Friday for the first time in more than five years.

The historic kiosk, stylized as the Cambridge KiOSK, will open in partnership with the Cambridge Office for Tourism and Somerville-based nonprofit CultureHouse, the city announced. The landmark will be a “cultural incubator, community gathering space, and visitor information center,” the city said.

The plans to open the kiosk, which has sat at the mouth of the MBTA stop for nearly 100 years, as a community space were announced in October of 2024. The city will celebrate its grand reopening May 30 between 10 a.m. and noon with a ribbon cutting and live music.  Continue reading

The ceremony will also debut the inaugural exhibit, “a pop-up newsstand celebrating Cambridge’s rich print media history,” inside the Cambridge KiOSK, the city said.

The historic kiosk has been vacant since longtime Cambridge landmark Out of Town News closed in 2019.

The kiosk, originally built as an entrance to the subway in 1927, was the natural center of the square. It began operating as a newsstand in 1983. The kiosk was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, and a Cambridge Landmark in 2017. The rotating exhibit will, in part, honor the newsstands’ legacy, the city said.

Since 2019, the kiosk has been under seemingly perpetual construction, sometimes surrounded by a chain link fence, in the middle of Cambridge’s most popular tourist spot. The Boston Globe reported that the construction cost $3.3 million, or about $6,600 per square foot.

Other events planned for the Cambridge KiOSK include open mics, art workshops, historical exhibits, and stand-up comedy. CultureHouse is promoting an interest form for local artists, organizations, and businesses to pitch events and activities at the site.

“Out of Town News once brought global conversations to Harvard Square when news from overseas was hard to access,” CultureHouse Executive Director Aaron Greiner said in a statement. “Today, information from around the world is readily available on our phones, but it’s local connections that are often hardest to find.”

The Cambridge KiOSK’s new hours will be on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Mondays through Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Fridays and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The Cambridge Visitor Information Center, which was temporarily located in a nearby bank, will reopen in the historic kiosk. In a statement, Cambridge City Manager Yi-An Huang called the reopening “a milestone for our community.” 

“This transformation respects the KiOSK’s rich history while creating new opportunities for gathering, creativity, and civic engagement in the heart of Harvard Square,” Huang said. “We are excited to see it thrive as a welcoming hub where residents and visitors can connect and celebrate Cambridge’s cultural vibrancy.”

The kiosk’s restoration is a part of overall construction to Harvard Square’s central plaza, which is set to be completed in the fall of 2026.

Renowned Cambridge club a perfect venue for students’ final presentations, focused on the highs and lows in the city’s musical heritage

History, like music, pulses with recurring refrains. Today’s battle over immigrant rights echoes a controversy, aptly, from Boston’s musical history. Boston University students explained that episode last week on an equally apt, if unorthodox, stage: Club Passim, Cambridge’s iconic folk music venue. 

Beantown’s musical heritage provided the theme for the final projects in this spring’s History of Boston class. One student team focused on the Boston Symphony Orchestra, including the World War I–era deportation of its conductor, Karl Muck, without any evidence that he’d aided his native Germany in the war. That exculpatory detail drowned in a flood of foreigners-damning press coverage, whose headlines the students flashed on a screen: “Dangerous Aliens Face Deportation,” “Alien Enemies Leave Boston Sunday.”

“Muck’s arrest was weaponized by these publications and used to grow a general xenophobic attitude towards European immigrants,” Charlotte Waeschle (COM’28) noted during her team’s presentation. The publicity’s effects rippled, added Shreeya Kulkarni (CAS’28), as “immigrants hid their cultural identities and even changed their names, and German [American] newspaper publications and schools [and] churches declined in attendance or shut down altogether.”

Other student teams addressed the role Arthur Fiedler (Hon.’51) played in in popularizing classical music as conductor of the Boston Pops for five decades, beginning in 1930; the city’s vibrant jazz scene after the Second World War; the question-authority vibe of punk music in the 1970s; and the role of Passim itself as greater Boston’s folk headquarters and launching pad for the careers of Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan. After the presentations, the students were treated to a buffet dinner and band: musicians, led by guitarist/vocalist Sean Staples, rocked the house with selections from two defunct local bands, Treat Her Right and Morphine.

Few students get to present on a storied stage for their final projects, or are feted by a concert afterward. Bruce Schulman, William E. Huntington Professor of History at the College of Arts & Sciences, never received musical accompaniment when he was a young history major, either. But in his History of Boston class, students don’t just study the past—they immerse themselves in it. 

And Schulman, a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, knows a thing or two about immersive teaching that grabs the attention of students by the lapels. “They never knew that doing history is not just memorizing a bunch of names and dates,” he tells BU Today. Throughout the semester, he introduced students to the city where they study via walking tours and the Passim finale. “One of the most often-stated reasons of entering students here for why they picked BU, is the Boston location. But I think the number one regret of graduating seniors is staying in the BU bubble–‘Didn’t really see much of Boston,’ ” he says.

Schulman knows the manager of Passim and arranged to rent the club for the class presentations—which were given before an invited audience of his friends and academic colleagues—while recruiting Staples, whom he had previously seen perform. Since this was a class about Boston and music, Staples chose to play repertoires by Treat Her Right and Morphine, homegrown bands. 

“To my ears,” he says, “they’re two of the best acts to ever come from this area, yet never achieved the visibility of bands like Aerosmith or the Cars. Both groups were also the product of a uniquely Cambridge music scene… I figured a celebration of two incredibly cool yet mostly unknown bands that rose from the neighborhood pubs of Cambridge would be appropriate.”

Like the city it covers, the History of Boston class is always changing. Each year, the course students are assigned a main project with a different theme. Among past topics: the 17th-century King Philip’s War, the Salem witch trials, and the city’s public parks. This semester, Schulman opted for Beantown’s musical heritage, partly as “a form of self indulgence,” he admits 

“I’m a big music fan. I see live music a lot,” he says. Beyond that, “Music was also a way of exploring a lot of other important themes in the city’s history, the development of the public infrastructure and architecture, race relations, class relations,” all of which his students also studied this semester. (The class subtitle is Community and Conflict.) 

During the last class before the presentations, Schulman coached students on prepping for the big night at Passim, suggesting that dressing up wasn’t necessary for a music club—but they shouldn’t dress down too much, either (“Don’t be wearing what you would mow the lawn in”) He also encouraged them to applaud their peer presenters and the musicians. And while it wasn’t required for when he stepped on stage: “You are absolutely permitted to clap and cheer wildly.” 

He has alternated teaching the class with colleagues for about 12 years. A key takeaway—conveyed by tapping into Boston as a living laboratory-—is that history isn’t made only by great forces and people who came before, but by those who study them as well. 

Plus, expansions for Anna’s Taqueria, Mr. Tamole, Post 1917, and more.

By Kara Baskin Globe Correspondent,Updated May 8, 2025, 12:00 p.m.

Coming soon: All-day café Daily Provisions opens this summer in Harvard Square (1 Brattle Square), new from New York restaurateur Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group. As we reported in March, Meyer will also open another Daily Provisions, plus Italian restaurant Ci Siamo, at Commonwealth Pier in the Seaport this summer.

In an earlier interview, Daily Provisions culinary director Claudia Fleming recommended crullers; Mediterranean tuna sandwiches with tapenade; and roast chicken.

“We’re there all day, for whatever you want,” she said.

Canadian chain Cactus Club Café opens in the Back Bay later this year (500 Boylston St.), marking its 34th location. It’s big — 9,500 square feet, with lounges, all-season patios, and al fresco spots — with a large menu, too, ranging from burgers to tacos to curries, pastas, and steaks.

On the South Shore, Salty Days Fish Co. (1 Shipyard Drive) brings patio-service cocktails, sushi, and seafood to Hingham’s Shipyard this summer, joining a sibling location in Cohasset.

In Foxborough, Patriot Place (2 Patriot Place) launches a suburban location of Downtown Crossing’s Estella this summer with an eclectic menu: chicken wings, yucca fries, Haitian spaghetti, lobster ravioli, and Hungarian filet mignon.

And in Lexington, look for a second outpost of swanky Reading steakhouse Post 1917 in June (27 Waltham St.).

Openings: The Boston Public Market (100 Hanover St.) gets spicier with the addition of Mr. Tamole, softly opened this week. Andres Medina-Carreto and his mom, Margarita Carreto, began with a mobile food stand, serving tamales with their signature, family-recipe mole sauce, which is vegan and gluten-free. At the Market, they’ll serve tamale plates with red, green, or mole sauce; tacos (including a potatoes and jalapenos version); and chilaquiles (which the menu cheekily notes are helpful during hangovers).

CanalSide Food + Drink at CambridgeSide (47 CambridgeSide Place) welcomes Chilacates (Mexican street food) and Fresh (smoothies, sandwiches, and acai bowls) to their food hall, joining established vendors like Lala’s Neapolitan-ish Pizza and Nu Burger.

And in Natick, Anna’s Taqueria opens on Tuesday, May 13, with a 2,000-square-foot restaurant and patio space (1265 Worcester St.). Exclusive to this location: corn tortillas made to order. Visit daily from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m.

Many Cambridge residents know Denise A. Jillson, the executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, as the heart of the local economy. But beyond her work at the HSBA, Jillson also has a deep history of political advocacy in the city.

By Jaya N. Karamcheti and Kevin Zhong

Harvard Square Business Association executive director Denise A. Jillson sits for an interview in the Smith Campus Center. Years before she led the HSBA, Jillson was a leader in efforts to repeal rent control in Cambridge. By Grace E. Yoon

Many Cambridge residents know Denise A. Jillson, the executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, as the heart of the local economy.

“She’s got her finger in everything, and she just cares so passionately about the Square that when I need something, I call Denise,” Carol Lewis, the congregational administrator at First Parish in Cambridge, said.

But beyond her work at the HSBA, Jillson also has a deep history of political advocacy in the city. As former co-chair of the the Small Property Owners Association and chair of the Massachusetts Homeowners Coalition, Jillson helped lead the charge to repeal rent control in Massachusetts during the 1994 state election.

Rent control, which was established in Cambridge during the 1970s, subjected more than a third of the city’s residential units to strict regulations on rent-price increases. Since the state referendum banning rent control narrowly passed, Cambridge’s housing stock increased by nearly $2 billion while residential turnover sharply increased.

John P. DiGiovanni, who worked with Jillson on the rent control repeal campaign, credited their success to Jillson’s dedication and leadership.

“I was really a soldier in her army, and she was the general,” he said.

‘We’re Not Alone in This’

Jillson said her interest in property ownership stems from her long family history in Cambridge.

“My family’s been in this area for generations, so the first family member that purchased property was here in Harvard Square in 1654,” Jillson said.

“Property ownership has always been in my DNA,” she added.

But it was not until 1986, when Jillson bought a rent controlled property with her husband, that she began advocating against rent control.

Jillson said that her experience as a landlord showed her the flaws of the rent control system. Despite the policy’s goal to help low-income individuals secure housing, Jillson said it inevitably caused landlords to “rent to the person with the highest credit rating.”

“So, if a single mom with three kids shows up to rent a unit, and a single person with a good job and no children, and is a young professional, who am I going to rent to?” Jillson said.

Frustrated by the policy, Jillson was spurred to action after seeing a flyer advocating against rent control — demonstrating that landlords were going through the same situation as her.

“I said to my husband, ‘We’re not alone in this. There are apparently other people that are having difficulty,’” she said.

Jillson then attended a meeting hosted by the Small Property Owners Association, an advocacy organization formed in opposition to rent control. After seeing how “fired up” other attendees were about the issue, Jillson decided to fully “jump in” to the world of advocacy.

When she became co-chair of SPOA in 1992, Jillson worked with an MIT economist to perform a demographic analysis of renters in Cambridge. The study found that 90 percent of renters were white, single, and college-educated, she said.

“That’s who it was, because we put them there. We did that because we had to pay our mortgage,” Jillson said. “The system doesn’t work, and it has the fundamental flaw, and that’s the part that was so upsetting.”

‘Brokered A Deal’

Two years into Jillson’s tenure as SPOA co-chair, she set her sights on the state elections, working as the chair of the Massachusetts Housing Coalition to get the repeal of rent control on the ballot.

For an initiative to qualify for the ballot, organizers needed to collect signatures from across the state equaling the amount of three percent of the total votes cast in the previous gubernatorial election. DiGiovanni said Jillson was the primary force responsible for securing these signatures.

“She was out in front of the room giving people and groups their assignments. She was the one keeping the trains on time. She had a whole map plan on how we were going to go and make this case to the people,” he said.

Jillson said her advocacy for rent control — combined with her full-time career and family life — was made possible by her partnership with her husband, George Pereira.

“There were no breaks, there were no holidays, there was no such thing as Thanksgiving,” Jillson said. “We were always, always, working.”

“I would get home from work, feed the kids, check their homework, George would take over, and I would take to the street,” she added.

The rent control repeal ballot initiative was ultimately successful, passing with a narrow 51 percent of the vote. But the policy battle did not end at the ballot box.

After the narrow win, municipalities – including Cambridge, Boston, and Brookline — filed home rule petitions in an attempt to extend rent control protections. State legislators approved the Cambridge petition, but ran into complications with anti-rent control governor William F. Weld ’66.

DiGiovanni said that Jillson stepped in to help resolve the complex situation.

“She brokered a deal with the legislature,” he said. “And legislature was unhappy, a good portion of them, and they had the majority — but they didn’t have enough to overturn a veto. So they needed the governor to agree.”

“He basically said to the legislature, ‘I’ll take my lead from Denise Jillson,” he added. “So that told them to get in a room and broker a deal with Denise.”

Jillson worked with legislators to expand rent-control protections for two years for certain income-eligible tenants — paving the way for its eventual abolition.

“Politics is about the art of compromise,” Jillson said.

“It can’t be all or nothing,” she added.

Now, as cities move to reinstate rent control protections across the state, Jillson has continued her advocacy against the protections. In 2019, she published an op-ed in Wicked Local titled “Rent control in Cambridge – why it didn’t work then and won’t work now.”

But others are not so sure. In 2023, the Cambridge City Council voted to support a bill from the state legislature that would repeal the ban on rent control.

Despite recent activism to reinstate rent control, Jillson stands by her work, saying that it helped pave the way for Cambridge’s current success.

“During the 70s and 80s and the early 90s, the city was really in very tough shape financially,” she said. “Then when rent control went away, as well as the advent of Kendall, with all the biotech, we now have a city.”

“Now, 20 years later, 30 years later, the city is in a remarkable, enviable financial situation,” she added.

—Staff writer Jaya N. Karamcheti can be reached at jaya.karamcheti@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Kevin Zhong can be reached at kevin.zhong@thecrimson.com.

A news-based journal on the Boston restaurant scene. The owner of this blog is also the founder of Boston’s Hidden Restaurants, a website that focuses on local dining spots.

Tuesday, May 06, 2025

A couple of months ago, it was reported that the person behind a NYC-based restaurant group would be bringing two dining spots to Boston, and now we have learned that he will also be bringing one of those places to Cambridge as well.

According to an article from Eater Boston, Danny Meyer and his Union Square Hospitality Group are planning to open a location of Daily Provisions in Harvard Square this summer, and it appears that this outlet will debut before the one coming to the Seaport District. As mentioned in an earlier article here, Meyer is going to be opening both Daily Provisions and a location of Ci Siamo (an Italian restaurant) at Commonwealth Pier in the fall/winter, and expect both locations of Daily Provisions to be all-day cafes that offer such options as crullers, breakfast and lunch sandwiches, roast chicken, and coffee (the Seaport location will also serve beer and wine, though it is not yet known whether the Harvard Square location will do so as well).

Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group includes such restaurants as Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, and The Modern, while Meyer is also behind the Shake Shack chain.

The address for the upcoming location of Daily Provisions in Harvard Square is 1 Brattle Square, Cambridge, MA, 02138. The website for Daily Provisions is at https://www.dailyprovisionsnyc.com/

[Earlier Article]Danny Meyer to Open Ci Siamo and Daily Provisions in Boston’s Seaport District

All-day cafe Daily Provisions is opening in Cambridge this summer

Erika Adams is the deputy editor of Eater Northeast, covering restaurant news and dining trends in Boston, Philadelphia, D.C., and New York. She has worked for Eater for five years in roles across the region, including reporter and deputy editor for Eater New York and editor for Eater Boston.

Union Square Hospitality Group, the NYC-based restaurant empire founded by famed restaurateur Danny Meyer, has something else in the works for Boston before the highly anticipated Seaport restaurants arrive later this year. The company will be opening a location of its fan-favorite all-day cafe, Daily Provisions, in Harvard Square, at 1 Brattle Square, this summer.

The cafe is on track to open before the already announced Seaport locations of Daily Provisions and Italian restaurant Ci Siamo, according to Daily Provisions president Zach Koff.

“At its heart, Daily Provisions is a neighborhood cafe and Harvard Square is one of the country’s celebrated neighborhoods,” Koff said in an email. “The unique mix of longtime residents, a diverse international demographic, and plenty of new visitors — all of whom are curious, smart and actively engaged — make it a perfect fit for Daily Provisions.”

At the Harvard Square spot, customers can expect all the hits that put Daily Provisions on the map in New York City, including the excellent breakfast sandwiches with thick slabs of bacon, juicy roast chicken, and the widely sought-after French crullers. There will be some Boston-specific menu items, according to Koff, but no details were disclosed yet.

The summer opening marks the first time that Union Square Hospitality Group has expanded Daily Provisions outside of the New York City area. (A location in Jersey City opened in March.) The company is also working on another outpost of the cafe to open in Washington, D.C., which is also slated to debut this summer.

The cafe joins another New York expat in Harvard Square, Joe’s Pizza (located just a couple of blocks away at 3 Brattle Street) as well as several other coffee shops and all-day cafes around the square, including outposts of Tatte, Blank Street, Flour, and Blue Bottle, plus newcomer Lovestruck Books, which is a cafe, wine bar, and romance bookstore all rolled into one.

For former accountant Anh Phi Tran, things just weren’t adding up to happiness. Then he bought the truck.

By Arya Zade Globe correspondent,Updated April 29, 2025, 7:00 a.m.

The smell of buttery dough crisping on a hot waffle iron mingles with the sweetness of caramelized pearl sugar, drawing passersby to Zinneken’s Waffle Truck. Often parked on Commonwealth Avenue near the Boston University campus or on Oxford Street in Harvard Square, the truck offers a taste of Belgium’s street food culture.

Thick, crusty, airy Belgian waffles are nothing like their American counterparts. Where the American recipe is typically made with baking powder, the Belgian version is crafted from a yeast-based dough. Each waffle caramelizes on the hot iron, forming a golden crust that crackles with every bite.

Zinneken’s waffles, dense yet airy, with a very appealing texture, are served warm in paper trays or paper boxes. In Belgium, they’re a beloved street food enjoyed any time of day, purchased from kiosks or carts for a quick indulgence. Toppings include strawberries, blueberries, bananas, Nutella, chocolate, and speculoos, Belgium’s famous butter-spice cookies.

“Anyone can make waffles,” says Anh Phi Tran, the owner of Zinneken’s Waffle Truck. “But they’re best in the hands of someone who grew up with them.” He was raised in Brussels by Vietnamese immigrants, and besides English, he speaks Vietnamese and French.

Zinneken’s is not only a waffle truck. Its brick-and-mortar cafe in Harvard Square offers a cozy retreat where patrons can savor freshly made waffles paired with seasonal drinks. While the cafe caters to those seeking a leisurely dining experience, the truck embodies the mobility of Belgian street food, taking Zinneken’s signature offerings to Boston’s streets. “The truck is about bringing waffles to people, wherever they are,” says Tran.

Whether served from the cafe or the truck, Zinneken’s waffles remain rooted in tradition and are made with a recipe that pays homage to Belgium’s rich culinary heritage. The Liège waffle, named after the Belgian town where it was created, dates back to the 1700s, when the chef of the prince-bishop of Liège adapted brioche dough into a dense, caramelized waffle.

Tran and his team have extended Zinneken’s reach through a catering service, in which they send a truck to weddings, bar mitzvahs, and corporate events. “Catering now makes up 70 percent of our business,” says the entrepreneur. This shift, largely driven by the pandemic, has allowed Zinneken’s to thrive in a changing dining landscape.

Tran spent nearly a decade steering Boston’s first Belgian waffle truck to success via an unconventional path.

Born to Vietnamese refugee parents in Belgium, Tran grew up surrounded by the cultural staples of his homeland, waffles among them. His father worked as an engineer, while his mother was employed in a chocolate factory. Now retired, they remained in Belgium as Tran pursued opportunities abroad. His family’s strict emphasis on preserving Vietnamese culture meant Tran had to navigate multiple identities from a young age. “I wasn’t the stereotypical Asian kid who stayed quiet and avoided conflict. I did a lot of sports, even though my parents preferred I focus on academics,” he says.

Tran has an older brother who eventually moved to New York City. His brother, who holds a PhD in biochemistry, now works in banking. Unlike his parents, Tran was the first in his family to enter the food industry, forging his own path in Boston’s culinary scene. His initial career took him to corporate America, where he worked for six years as an accountant, a job that taught him valuable skills but ultimately left him unfulfilled. “I just wanted to do something different,” he says.

In 2014, Tran partnered with Zinneken’s founder, Nhon Ma, a French and Belgian citizen of Vietnamese descent, to expand the brand beyond its Harvard Square cafe.

The name Zinneken’s comes from the Zenne River, which runs through the center of Brussels. Historically, locals referred to the stray dogs near the river as “zinneke,” a term that evolved into a symbol of the city’s mixed Dutch and French heritage. The name pays tribute to Brussels’ multiculturalism.

The transition was not smooth. The waffle truck faced logistical hurdles, including finding suitable parking spots, sourcing fresh ingredients, and dealing with frequent mechanical issues. “People think it’s easy to operate a truck, but it’s not as simple as it looks,” Tran says.

He remained focused on the business, especially growing it organically. “We don’t make risky investments but instead invest from money that we make and have saved,” Tran says. “We tried to go nuclear in the beginning — adding more trucks and scaling quickly — but that didn’t work.” Instead, he adopted a more cautious approach, refining processes and focusing on consistent quality.

Now, Zinneken’s has one waffle truck and hires about five or six part-time employees, while the store employs around nine to 10 full-time and part-time staff members. Their brick-and-mortar stores are also located in Glastonbury, Conn., and Providence, R.I.

Tran’s decision to leave Belgium for Boston was shaped by both personal and practical factors. “I had a strained relationship with my father,” he says. With family already in Boston and ambitions in business, the move made sense. Though adapting to a new country came with its challenges. “It was a little lonely the first year, but I quickly made friends.”

Growing up in Belgium as the child of Vietnamese refugees profoundly influenced Tran’s perspective. “I do consider myself Vietnamese-Belgian, and now also Bostonian,” he says. His Vietnamese heritage shaped his approach to family and relationships, while Belgium instilled in him a rigorous work ethic and a nuanced political view. “Knowing my Vietnamese culture actually helped me here,” Tran says. His ability to navigate multiple cultures became a cornerstone of his approach to running Zinneken’s.

He sees his success rooted in his ability to connect with people. “Corporate was just about numbers,” he says about his time as an accountant. “Here, it’s about people.” The truck’s mobility allows it to cater to diverse communities, and Tran finds immense satisfaction in seeing familiar faces at events or repeat customers at the truck.

A highlight of moving the trucks around was parking it at PAX East, a large gaming convention at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. “It’s a lot of planning and long hours, but my staff loves it,” he says. “You see all these crazy costumes and young people — it’s stressful but also a lot of fun.” Events like these highlight Zinneken’s role as a community builder.

As Zinneken’s approaches its 10th anniversary, Tran has no immediate plans for expansion, but he dreams of introducing an electric or solar-powered truck to reduce emissions. He acknowledges the cost is a significant barrier.

Tran’s workload varies by season — some weeks are as light as 20 hours, while others stretch to 60 hours or more. Despite the long hours, he finds his motivation in the connections he’s built along the way. “I have a really young crew, and they keep me going,” he says. Most of his part-time staff are students from Boston University and Simmons College. “This year was hard because many of them moved on, but I feel honored they chose to work with a small business like ours.”

Tran shrugs off the idea of success as an endpoint. “Entrepreneurship to me is still a job,” he says. “I work for my truck, and that’s how I see it.” He says it’s not about recognition — it’s about showing up, waffle by waffle, and letting the work speak for itself.