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The Dominican kitchen moves to Harvard Square’s Garage this month

Hyde Park’s Seila Herrera, 39, runs Las Palmas in Roslindale and now in Harvard Square. The newer Cambridge location will move from Harvard University’s Smith Campus Center to The Garage on Mount Auburn Street later this month. Herrera took over the fast-casual Dominican spot in 2016, wanting to showcase the foods she grew up eating in the Dominican Republic — empanadas, stewed chicken, caramel flan — a big but ultimately gratifying departure from her prior career at Kaplan Career Institute in Charlestown.

Tell me how you first got involved with Las Palmas.

I got involved in Las Palmas because my mom used to work there, and I was a regular. And then the original owners were selling it, and I thought: “That sounds very interesting!” I’ve always been passionate about food, the way we eat, and the way we cook. In March 2016, I made the decision [to buy it]. I jumped right into it.

One of my things about Dominican food is it’s not commercialized yet. It’s not like Mexican food, where everybody recognizes it. I don’t know if you’re familiar with any food industry vendors. They have sections for every cuisine that you can think of, but there’s not a section for Dominican [food]. So that really caught my attention. Why is Dominican food not commercialized enough? Do we not know how to sell it? Do we not know how to package it? That had been in my head for a long time before getting to the restaurant.

What were you doing before?

I come from the education industry. I was a registrar for one of the Kaplan higher education schools in Charlestown. Then I had a baby, and then I was just trying to figure out what my next move should be. When this idea came about, my baby was 3 months old. It was just one of those things that I felt I had to act on.

I have a daughter who’s going to be 21 years old, and at the time, she helped me a lot with the baby. It was teamwork between my mom and my daughter. I’m very grateful that I was able to embark on this path. With the help of everyone, I got it done. That’s what’s important.

What’s different about the restaurant now that you own it?

It took a lot of work, a lot of time, to actually change everything around. Now, we don’t use Styrofoam. Now, I’m using microwaveable containers, because the food will hold better — if you buy a plate of food, you can just bring it home and reheat it whenever you want to. And labeling: No Dominican restaurant was ever doing any of that. So it took a little bit to do a shift in the community. We’re doing something different; we’re doing something better. That was around one to two years, all this shifting. Then I realized: OK, we need to cater; we need to reach out to nonprofits. We need to reach out to companies.

Then the pandemic happened. Through the pandemic, I was able to stay afloat because we partnered with Off Their Plate and World Central Kitchen. We were one of the few restaurants in Boston feeding the front-liners. That helped a lot. That opened doors for us. So we started at MIT in 2021 at their Launchpad. We were the first Dominican restaurant in the MIT schools. We were there until this April, and then we started at Harvard in the Smith Campus Center in October 2021 as well. We were their first Hispanic restaurant.

Tell me about your food. What do you love about it?

I love that it’s the same [food] that I used to eat. I was born in the Dominican Republic and I go back every year, every couple months, if I can. And it was very hard for me to find the same quality of food that I was accustomed to eating — my mom’s cooking. It’s very different when you buy food elsewhere. So I wanted to really tell people: This is how we cook; this is how we eat. It has a lot of flavors, but it can be also healthy. I think there’s maybe a little stigma where, people think that Caribbean food, or Dominican food might be greasy or not very healthy. That’s not true.

Let’s say that you go to Dominican Republic right now, and you have a bowl of my food. It’s going to taste exactly the same. I’ve always told my customers: I wouldn’t sell you anything that I don’t eat. My kids eat there every day. I eat there every day. I’m very proud.

What are your favorite things on the menu?

My favorite items are yellow rice with pigeons peas, stewed chicken, and sweet plantains.

How would you describe Dominican food versus other cuisines?

Dominican food is full of flavors. I use a lot of garlic. I use a lot of cilantro. I use a lot of red and green peppers, a lot of onions, and I buy my ingredients fresh. I don’t like to freeze anything. I believe in fresh food. Once you start freezing food, it doesn’t taste the same. But we are very big on garlic. We use garlic on mostly everything.

Did you grow up loving food? Tell me a little bit about what your childhood was like.

My mom was a homemaker, so she was home all day, every day. She would cook three meals a day. When my dad used to come home from work, he would find a plate of hot food waiting. I was involved in the kitchen with my mother growing up. She tells me a funny story: When I was 7 years old, I was already doing dishes and making coffee. Food was a big part of growing up. I became a picky eater: I wouldn’t eat any Dominican food unless it was from my mother.

I came here when I was maybe 7, 8 years old, but I didn’t really start living here until I was 12. My father came first. We wanted a better future for ourselves. We lived in New York for two years. And then we moved to Boston. By the time I was 13, I was already settled in Boston and went to Charlestown High School here. I got my first job when I was 14, at ABCD Summer Programs, a program run by the City of Boston for teens.

What did you think of Boston when you got here?

It was totally different from living in New York. It was a very quiet city back then. But my job, as my mother would say, was just to go to school and come home.

Do you have any favorite local neighborhood restaurants that you visit besides your own?

Before Hyde Park, I lived in the South End. I love Barcelona. That’s my favorite tapas bar. I love the gambas. I love the bread with tomato. I love the eggplant. I love everything!

The new mandates are some of the most stringent in the country, experts say.

Cambridge’s City Council passed a landmark measure last month that mandates ambitious reductions of greenhouse gas emissions in the city’s medium and large nonresidential buildings, marking a strong step toward combating climate change.

Under the legislation, which was approved 8-0, commercial buildings between 25,000 and 100,00 square feet must reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Buildings larger than 100,000 square feet — mainly labs and commercial headquarters — must do so by 2035.

The measure will affect some 1,100 buildings.

One of only a handful of building emissions laws nationwide, the legislation targets a sector that’s long stymied Cambridge’s progress on climate goals. The lion’s share of the city’s emissions — close to 80 percent — come from building operations and construction, according to data cited in the city’s 2021 update to the Net Zero Action Plan.

The new mandates will cut Cambridge’s “BEUDO emissions” in half by 2030, and by about 70 percent by 2035, according to the city. “BEUDO emissions” refers to emissions from non-residential buildings larger than 25,000 square feet and residential buildings with 50 or more units, a category that generates about 60 percent of Cambridge’s total emissions, according to City Manager Yi-An Huang.

“It’s really quite groundbreaking,” said Councilor Quinton Zondervan, who helped lead the push in concert with Councilor Patricia Nolan, Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui, and activist groups like theSunrise Movement, 350.org, and Mothers Out Front. “I’ve been working on this for a very long time, and this is really the first serious, significant climate action that the city has taken.”

Known as BEUDERO, short for the Building Energy Use Disclosure and Emissions Reductions Ordinance, the policy revises the 2014 Building Energy Use Disclosure Ordinance, BEUDO,which mandated that building owners report their annual emissions. BEUDERO’s passage comes in the wake of Boston’s 2021 adoptionof a similar measure aiming to address emissions in large buildings. But Cambridge’s law is more stringent — its 2035 timeline for the largest buildings is 15 years earlier than Boston’s.

The Cambridge measure, which was filed as a set of amendments to the previous BEUDO legislation, comes as the state is working to move away from fossil fuels.

Cities and towns across Massachusetts, including Brookline and Watertown, are adopting new building codes discouraging fossil fuel use in new construction. A state climate bill passed last year established a pilot program allowing 10 towns toban fossil fuel use in new construction altogether. Cambridge is planning to participate in the program.

BEUDERO, the final part of Cambridge’s three-fold Green New Deal policy bundle, is intended to put the city on track to meet its goal of using only renewable energy by 2035.

Though climate advocates applauded the legislation, it has also received pushback from property owners, who have voiced concerns about the feasibility of complying with the ambitious deadlines.

“These BEUDO amendments are unworkable, [they] penalize business owners, property owners and residents for not being able to achieve the unachievable by imposing financial burdens that are unfair and unjust,” said Denise Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, in an e-mail.

Though decarbonizing buildings is challenging, experts say it’s not onlypossible, but is a necessary step toward achieving climate goals.

“By US standards, this is one of the most ambitious existing-building emissions regulations to date, and complex details will need to be resolved,”saidHolly Samuelson, a researchfaculty member at the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities, in an e-mail. “However, any realistic path to avoiding the most severe consequences of climate change involves a major effort to decarbonize buildings … and soon.“

Buildings can reduce their emissions by up to 30 percent “off the bat” by ensuring their electricity comes from renewable sources through programs like the Cambridge Community Electricity Program, which allows customers to purchase 100 percent green electricity for an added cost, Zondervan said. Energy efficiency improvements and “very feasible technologies” like geothermal heat pumps can also go a long way, he said.

Unlike Boston’s regulation, BEUDERO allows carbon offsets — a controversial mechanism by which a company funds carbon-reducing activities elsewhere to cancel out its own emissions — though they must be vetted and approved by a soon-to-be-created review board. There’s also an “alternative compliance” option: Companies can pay a fine of $234 per ton of excess emissions.

Still, some property owners say they feelunequipped to decarbonize theirbuildings without technical and financial assistance.

“I’m not Harvard. I’m not MIT. I don’t have a sustainability team,” said Patrick Barrett, a real estate developer who is on the board of the Central Square Business Improvement District. “I’m fully appreciative of the need to do this, but I feel like I’ve been told to solve an unsolvable problem with a blindfold on and my hands tied behind my back.”

To ease this burden, the city’s Community Development Department is working on a centralized “resource hub” to provide technical assistance and streamlineinformationon utility, state, and federal incentives to building owners. The department, whose staff introduced the legislation in 2021, has put $2 million toward the effort and hired a full-time employee to work specifically on implementation and enforcement of the mandates.

Property owners have also criticized the city council’s planning process as not being sufficiently inclusive. There was “zero representation for commercial owners” at a recent public hearing for BEUDERO, Barrett said. “A lot of this stuff blindsided everybody. I was disappointed in what the council did, but more disappointed in how they did it.”

Nolan said the city put out mailings and public notices, but acknowledged that outreach efforts to small and medium property owners occurred “late in the process.” Future climate legislation should and would involve a more “transparent, open, and inclusive” process, she said.

Some city councilors and climate activists think the amendment should be even stronger, citing the accelerating impact of climate change.

Margery Davies,a Cambridge resident and active member of Mothers Out Front, a nonprofit that advocates for climate action, said she wishes the amendment was stronger.

“I’m still absolutely planning to continue to pay attention and not just say, ‘Oh, wipe my hands. It’s done.’ No, it’s not done,” she said.

Some city councilors are planning future additions tostrengthen BEUDERO. Zondervan said he wants to reintroduce an amendment that would require new commercial buildings to be net-zero by 2030.

Hearings will be held later this summer, he said.

“We know the technology exists, and the economics already makes sense,” Zondervan said. “It just doesn’t make any sense to build a building tomorrow that’s still depending on fossil fuels.”

The GreenNew Deal policies alsoinclude the Green Jobs Ordinance, which will establish free green jobs training programs for low-income residents, and a zoning petition requiring building ownersto report expected emissions from the use and building materials of new construction projects.

Cambridge officials hope the Green New Deal, and especially BEUDERO, will inspire similar climate actions across the state and country.

Nationwide, emissions standards for buildings are “growing in number and rigor,” said Samuelson. “Other cities will likely learn from Cambridge’s research and experience, especially with the 2035 goal for the largest commercial buildings.”

BEUDERO’s passage is reason foroptimism, Zondervan said.

“I think it’s really hopeful, because it’s pretty easy to get depressed when you’re looking at the headlines or when you step outside and you’re choking on wildfire smoke. But the reality is that we can do a lot more about this problem than we are doing.”

An earlier version of this story misstated who introduced the legislation and mischaracterized who led the effort to pass it. The legislation was introduced by Cambridge’s Community Development Department and was led by City Councilors Quinton Zondervan and Patricia Nolan, and Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui.

The earlier version also misstated the scale of expected emissions cuts. Only the emissions from BEUDO structures in aggregate will be cut in half by 2030 and 70 percent by 2035.

A new location of a pair Dominican restaurants has debuted.

According to a press release, Las Palmas soft-opens today from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM in the former El Jefe’s Taqueria space in The Garage in Harvard Square, joining its original location in Roslindale as well as another at Harvard University’s Smith Campus Center, though we are told that that one will be closing on July 31 (there had once been another at The Launchpad at MIT as well). Expect the new location–which is a full-service quick-casual spot–to offer customizable bowls, empanadas, roasted pork, stewed chicken, Dominican sandwiches, house-made flan, and more, and it will be open for lunch and dinner seven days a week.

The address for the new location of Las Palmas in Harvard Square is 83 Mt Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138. The website for the business is at https://laspalmaskitchen.com/

A new outdoor bar is on its way to a hotel in the heart of Cambridge.

According to a source, Garden Bar is getting ready to open at the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square, with its Instagram page saying that it will feature local craft beers, natural wines, frozen cocktails, and live music. A job post within the LinkedIn site goes on to mention that it will be an extension of Noir lounge and will be set up as a “centerpiece” of the hotel’s courtyard.

The address for Garden Bar (and the Charles Hotel) is 1 Bennett Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138. The website for the hotel can be found at https://www.charleshotel.com/

By Shirley Leung, The Boston Globeupdated on June 27, 2023

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The high price of liquor licenses in Boston has always been a barrier to entry for restaurateurs, but that didn’t faze Palmer Matthews, who budgeted $350,000 to buy one on the secondary market.

As he and his partners got close to signing a lease last spring,however, sticker shock struck: The going rate for a full-bar license surged to more than $500,000. They shelved their plans to open a restaurant.

“No way we could justify that kind of investment,” said Matthews, a former Boston bartender who has opened two restaurants in Quincy, Pearl & Lime and Townshend, where liquor licenses are a fraction of the cost. “The long and short of it, it’s prohibitive in a way that it is hurting [Boston] in a lot of different ways.”

Daniel Roughan has also paused his search for a Boston spotfor his next restaurantand is instead looking in Brookline, Burlington, and Wellesley.

“Boston doesn’t make sense because of the liquor license,” said Roughan, who owns Source in Harvard Square. “It’s a shame for the people of Boston who will miss out on a lot of great young chefs and operators that will go elsewhere.”

It’s a story we’ve heard before, but this time it’s more unsettling as Boston recovers from a pandemic. While scores of restaurants shuttered for good during the COVID-19 public health crisis, others are clamoring to fill the gap. In an industry with notoriously thin profit margins, that means big landlords and deep-pocketed restaurateurs are increasingly the only ones who can stomach the high cost of doing business in Boston. That’s shutting out smaller players with more modest resources, especially those of color in lower-income neighborhoods.

The state caps the number of liquor licenses in Boston. Over the past two decades, the Legislature has allowed Boston to issue new ones, but demand continues to outstrip supply. That means if restaurateurs want a license, they mostly likely have to negotiate a sale directly from an existing holder.

A recent high mark for such a transaction: a $600,000 sale of a full-bar liquor license to the restaurant and lounge attached to View Boston, the newly opened observatory perched at the top of the Prudential Center, where admission alone is $34.99 for adults.

That’s according to data from the Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission detailing the 15 Boston liquor licenses soldsince March. The next most expensive:a $575,000 license to serve cocktails in the 11th-floor dining and lounge space at the new One Congress tower. Then there was a $550,000 transaction involving a massive bowling alley and restaurant conceptspaceat the new Hood Park complex in Charlestown.

Of the 1,100 or so liquor licenses for restaurants, most are in use, but others may be held by landlords or restaurant owners, waiting to be deployed when the timing is right,according to brokers and lawyers in the hospitality industry.

The situation resembles the housing market, where inventory is tight and buyers are stretched because potential sellers won’t budge from their high price points.

“It is a bidding war for these licenses right now,” said Lesley Delaney Hawkins, chair of the restaurant and hospitality practice group at Prince Lobel law firm. “The positive is that people want to still come in and invest in Boston … the negative is the concern of pricing people out of the market.”

One of those eager to obtain a liquor license is Hawkins’s client Andy Husbands, who is bringing his Smoke Shop BBQ concept to East Boston. But, for the first time in his decades-long career, Husbands will open a restaurant without serving alcohol.

While restaurants tend to make most of their money from alcohol sales, Husbands said he won’t be able to make the numbers work on a 90-seat restaurant if he has to spend $500,000 for a liquor license. He has several locations in the area, including in Cambridge and Somerville. A license might make sense if his Eastie space was bigger.

“We’re not some fancy restaurant,” said Husbands, who is also Smoke Shop’s pitmaster. “It’s unfathomable to pay that amount of money. How can we ever pay that back?”

Husbands came to East Boston hoping to get a so-called restricted license, which can be obtained from City Hall directly. This type of license cannot be transferred, and must be returned to the city when a restaurant closes. Many restricted licenses are for underserved communities to create jobs for residents and give opportunities to restaurateurs of color.

Husbands said he has waited more than two years for one of the 10 restricted licenses in East Boston to become available. “Now that seems to be a fool’s errand,” he said.

A bill filed on Beacon Hill, with the blessing of the Boston City Council and Mayor Michelle Wu, calls for adding a handful of restricted licenses in 10 zip codes annually for five years. The bill would create as many as 250 new licenses in neighborhoods that could use an economic boost, including East Boston, Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, and Hyde Park.

But supporters will have to wait until at least next year before there is any action on the measure. In an interview, state Representative Tackey Chan, a Democrat from Quincy who serves as cochair of the joint committee that reviews liquor licenses, said he isn’t scheduling the first hearing on the Boston bill until the fall.

Chan says he understands the urgency, but he also wants to discern the impact of a bill that would represent a substantial increase — potentially more than 20 percent — in the number of liquor licenses to Boston restaurants.

“One of the objectives is that we don’t want to adversely affect the value of existing license holders,” said Chan. “We want to ensure that all liquor licenses proposed will actually be utilized.”

Nick Korn, principal at Offsite, a restaurant training and development firm in Boston, said the state shouldn’t be concerned about propping up the value of licenses. Offsite’s analysis indicates that so far the addition of more than 100 new licenses since 2006 has not led to a price drop on the secondary market.

“The government is complicit in prolonging a fundamentally unequal system based on artificial scarcity,” Korn said.

Josh Weinstein, owner of The Quiet Few in East Boston, was among the lucky ones to score a restricted license in 2018. He wanted to open a tiny, no-frills neighborhood whiskey tavern ― it’s only 1,000 square feet with about 40 seats.

“You get so much personality in a small space,” he said.

Weinstein was surprised to learn thatHusbands’s new Smoke Shop won’t feature the local chain’s well-known American whiskey program. With all the residential development underway, Weinstein said,East Boston needs more restaurants and bars.

“That breaks my heart they are opening without a liquor license,” he said. “Not only do I love his food, I was so excited. It’s a missed opportunity for East Boston to be a destination for whiskey lovers.”

Harvard Square Business Association is welcoming 3 members of the herd, Flora, Frida Cowlo and Inside Out to historic Winthrop Park. 

The Harvard Square Business Association will partner with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Jimmy Fund to bring CowParade New England to Harvard Square. They are welcoming 3 members of the herd, Flora, Frida Cowlo and Inside Out to historic Winthrop Park. 

Since 1948, the generosity of millions of people in New England and around the globe has helped Dana-Farber and the Jimmy Fund save countless lives and reduce the burden of cancer for patients and families worldwide.

This year’s CowParade New England is presented by Herb Chambers and brings 75 life-size cows, designed by a range of regional artists throughout New England, to high trafficked landmarks around Greater Boston to celebrate 75 years of progress and impact made possible by the Jimmy Fund community. All proceeds directly benefit Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s efforts to defy cancer.

One area of Massachusetts is being named the best city in the country for families to live.

Fortune Well compiled their own list of the best cities across the country that are optimal for living. The website analyzed nearly 1,900 cities, with the best places to live scoring high on assets like health care, education and resources for seniors.

For the first time, this year’s list highlights the best place to live in each of the 50 states, according to Fortune Well. Cambridge was found to be the best city to reside.

JPMorgan Chase & Co has opened a branch in Harvard Square, according to a notice it filed with the Treasury Department last week. This location is the bank’s first branch in Cambridge.

On June 13, Chase quietly opened a branch on 9 JFK St. in Cambridge. Prior to the branch opening, the bank only had an ATM in the Harvard MBTA stop, but not a physical branch location.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A Massachusetts city is ranked the top place to live for families out of America’s best zip codes all of which can help fight isolation and build social ties, according to Fortune.

The publication recently released its annual list of 50 best places to live for families, and Cambridge ranked number one.

“Home to world-renowned educational institutions Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge embraces its dual position as a college town and bustling metro, just across the Charles River from Boston,” Fortune wrote.

Cambridge, with a population of 117,200, is known for its universities, museums, craft breweries, outdoor spaces, the Head of the Charles Regatta, and its bustling squares.

“It’s most well-known, Harvard Square, is full of charming historic buildings, cafés, boutiques, theaters, and performance spaces,” the publication wrote.

The median sale price for a single-family residence in Cambridge in 2022 was $913,759, and the median household income was $116,709, according to Fortune.

Locals also enjoy living in Cambridge because of a few other perks which include low crime rates, and quality public schools, 41% of which were rated above average by the national nonprofit GreatSchools, according to the publication.

Fortune analyzed nearly 1,900 cities, towns, villages, suburbs, exurbs, and townships across all 50 states, using more than 200,000 unique data points to find the best place in every state.

The best places to Live scored high in the areas of health care, education, and resources for seniors, which the publication said all help fight isolation and build social ties.

Another New England city made the top 10: Portsmouth, N.H., ranked 2 on the list. After that, New England entries were placed in the following order: Portland, Maine, ranked 15, South Burlington, Vermont, ranked 21, Norwalk, Conn., ranked 29, and Cranston, R.I., ranked 38.