Details on Brick & Mortar, Replacing the Enormous Room This Month

Score one for B-Side Lounge fans. (Photo courtesy of Flickr/Dan4th)

In October, we told you that the Enormous Room would close after nine years as a Cambridge fixture to make way for a new nightlife concept. I just hung up with owner Gary Strack, who shared some exciting news on the replacement, which will be called Brick & Mortar.

Fans of the much-beloved B-Side Lounge should rejoice — the spot will be a joint concept between Strack, B-Side founder Patrick Sullivan, and other yet-unnamed industry stalwarts. “We just really, really love bars,” Strack says. “It’s almost a religious kind of passion.”

Misty Kalkofen, a local bartender extraordinaire who got her start at B-Side and most recently tended bar at Drink, will be helping run the bar. Despite the obvious talent on hand, Strack told me that Brick & Mortar isn’t looking to be an upscale cocktail bar; it’s going for less fuss, and more fun. “It’s a neighborhood bar,” he says. “That doesn’t mean that the people involved aren’t at the highest level. We sort of feel that the [cocktail] culture has tipped over a little bit, and it needs to be more about hospitality and more about the patron.”

Strack couldn’t provide more details on the booze, but I expect a mix of creative and classic cocktails, plus a broad beer list. Food-wise, Strack says there will be shareable small plates, that will be “interpreting the things that are classic in our culture and other cultures to eat in a bar experience.”

Expect Brick & Mortar to open soon — sometime within the next month, to be sure (and likely much sooner than that).

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