Think Tank

Seems to be closed for repairs? Maybe for good? Beats me.
Their website is now a GoDaddy domain and their FB page is entirely out of date.

We came after work on a Tuesday for the $ 1 oysters that they advertise right on their home page, every Tuesday from 4 – 7. LIES!!! There are no oysters. Said the hostess, «Oh yeah, we used to have those.»
Dollar oysters would have been enough to bring me back, but there’s no way now.

We showed up for our reservation and the hostess seemed to have no idea I had made a reservation which was a little strange as I spoke to an actual person on the phone a couple days earlier (makes you wonder what the point is, right?). Regardless, they were able to quickly pull a table together and seat the 12 of us in the back where we had the whole room to ourselves. Our server was awesome — he was attentive, efficient, informative, and very friendly.
Our meals came out quickly and everyone seemed really pleased with what they ordered. We had people ordering burgers, noodles, steak, salads, pork belly, a little of everything. I ordered the Seoul Burger, the restaurants’ most popular dish (which I can now see why). The Seoul Burger is a Korean BBQ marinated beef patty with lettuce, tomato, a fried egg, with sriracha aioli, on a poppy seed bun. To round it out I got the garlic fries.
This was a damn good burger. Not your traditional burger but also not so crazy that you forget you are eating a burger. It all worked well together. The beef was cooked just the way I ordered it — medium — and the smokiness of the BBQ sauce mixed with the aioli creating this creamy sauce with a bit of a zing (there wasn’t too much of it either which is good — less is more in this case). The fries were exactly as they were described — garlicky. I’d definitely get both of these items again if I were to go back.
Overall, the service was fantastic and Think Tank has a great atmosphere. Photo booth, anyone?

A solid three star experience.
I was kind of surprised by the atmosphere at Think Tank… it was a little more dank than I thought it would be. A little divey. The hostess situation seemed a bit odd. They asked if we wanted to sit in the lounge or the other area… we had never been there, so we had no idea. We ended up just sitting in a booth in the lounge. We were seated immediately at 7:30 on a Friday and it was not crowded.
They have a decent drink menu and the regular menu was nice and had a lot of veggie and vegan options. We had a groupon so we ordered the swordfish tacos to start. These were definitely super flavorful, however I could have made them at home. Store bought white wraps filled with (perfectly cooked) swordfish, cheese, store bought salsa and guac. Tasty, but expensive for something I could make myself.
For my entrée I got the Bistro Noodle Bowl with crispy tofu. The crispy tofu was $ 5 extra and it was essentially four deep fried triangles of tofu. They weren’t flavorful at all and they were TOTALLY not worth the price. The rest of the noodle bowl was fresh and delicious though. My fiancé got the Seoul burger and really enjoyed it.
Service was pretty good if not a little gruff, but whatever. I probably would skip this in the future in favor of the many other restaurants in Kendall Square.

just to start, i’m really surprised by all the mediocre reviews. I had a great time here with my family tonight and i’ll definately return. maybe since we came on a monday night it wasnt busy and food was being made more carefully and the waiter was able to be more personable, who knows. all I can say is that I really enjoyed my experience here.
I rarely ever go to Cambridge, I always get lost, but tonight my mom wanted to use her groupon and boy was it worth it and such a good experience tha we will most definately be returning again. Not only was the food great, it had to be the really great service. Our waiter was extremely attentive and knowledgeable about both the menu and beers. Also, I was pleasntly surprised just how good this place was. definately a place i’ll recommend for a fun night out and good food.
Apps: we got salt and pepper shrimp. haved had shrimp fried so perfectly ever. not overcooked at all, extremely fresh.
Sticky Ribs: really tasty sauce. Sweet with a great spicy heat. Gets you right at the end. Also extremely tender and I wanted to order more!
Signature Wings with sriracha sauce. interesting twist from the regular buffalo sauce. Definately has a different spicy kick. not a painful heat but more of a slow heat that hits you right at the last bite and you can’t do anything but eat another. Avocado aioli on the side, killer.
Entrees: I got the honey glazed salmon. Perfectly cooked, great flavor.
other dishes ordered (actually, we got one of every entrée) and no one had any complaints about their dishes.
my sister got the Seoul Burger. HOLY MOTHER OF WOW. i never thought i’d get the flavor of amazing korean bbq in a mouth watering burger. seriously. I’ve had all osrts of burgers in my life, but NONE have been this spectacular.
so, if you have read this far, I’ll tell you why I gave this place 5 stars. great service. I know I mentioned it up top, but what our waiter did for me was beyond nice. Everyone’s dinners came out before mine. When he came out holding a salad and fries and no salmon I was confused. He told me they dropped my salmon while plating and refired a new salmon so I’d have to wait about 5 mins. so instead of making me watch my family eat, I got garlic parmesean fries and a salad, SCORE! Something so simply and thoughtful las left a good mark in my book and that is why Think Tank gets 5 stars.

DON’T COME HERE FOR FOOD!!! I really wanted to like this place since I love the Kendall Cinema and a lot of the new foodie options opening up in the area.
BUT the appetizers took about 30 minutes to come out. The servers were incredibly rude and spacey. The sriracha wings had hairs (or feather remainders as the waiter claimed?!). Garlic parmesan fries were over fried. Flatbread «caramelized onions» weren’t actually caramelized. And the fish in the soft tacos was neither fresh, well seasoned, nor cut properly.
The menu looks promising but execution is a complete joke. SERIOUSLY. There are so many delicious restaurants around Kendall. No need to go here.

We saw this restaurant via Groupon deal and I was looking forward to eating there after reading the menu. The place is not close to the T and it is very hard to find.
IT WAS ABSOLUTELY THE WORST EATING EXPERIENCE I’VE EVER HAD!!!
When we got there, we were seated right away as the restaurant was not busy. Our waitress came right over and she was pleasant. We placed our drink order and waited awhile to receive them. Our friend had gunk (read…dirt) on his beer glass… he brushed it off and thought nothing of it.
We placed our order for four appetizers: Ribs, Pork Belly, Sliders, and Frites
A manager (possible owner) walked by our table and we requested the waitress because we were waiting for a second round of drinks and we never saw her again after we placed our order. She brought over very warm glasses for our beers — we asked the bartender if we could get cooler glasses and THEY DIDN’T HAVE ANY?!?
After 40 minutes, I asked the waitress, «where was our food?» She responded that the kitchen got slammed and it would be another 5 – 10 minutes. The place was not full and the bar had plenty of seats.
Our sliders came out and they were excellent (deserving the 1 star)
Then the Ribs, Pork Belly, and Frites showed up.
HAIR…HAIR in the pork belly sauce! The HAIR was embedded in the sauce! I immediately waved over the manager and he stated that the kitchen is very clean. He came back with such arrogance and stated that the kitchen staff does not have air like that. My husband tried the frites… so salty they were inedible!!! it’s a damn french fry… how can you screw up a fry??? well the Think Tank can. We couldn’t and didn’t touch another bite.
The charged us for the food and because we had a Groupon, they stated they did take the food off. When I questioned about it, the snobbery of his tone was stating that the Groupon took care of the cost. Granted, I paid for the Groupon, so we left starving. We walked to Tommy Doyles where we finally were able to eat something good. AVOID THE THINK TANK…

Place is nice. You can tell owners put a lot of money in here. Friday and sat nites are terrible for drinks. The bartenders are scared of the patrons. Simple things like acknowledging customer. It’s a very very small bar and the bartenders all look down like there’s something on the ground. They were slow to serve because they didn’t check on customers. you gotta make eye contact dudes!
haven’t tried the food, but if the servers are as timid as the bartenders you’ll never get your food! next time i’m in the area, i’ll just keep going to friendly toast. 1 bartender handles the whole restaurant, and they make stronger drinks.
I brought 30 ppl here after head of the charles. 3 bartenders couldn’t handle 15ppl at the bar??? The bartenders at larger bars have 3 bartenders handle hundreds of ppl… tavern on the square, tommy doyles, meade hall, joshua tree, the list goes on.

Think Tank is a fairly cool little spot nestled in the basement space of Friendly Toast (if you’ve been to Friendly Toast you know how you gotta walk into that weird stairwell to get to the bathroom and go downstairs? Yea, that’s Think Tank abutting said bathroom).
I’ve been twice now for food and once for drinks (1^st visit), and the menu changed fairly substantially since my last visit. Currently, the menu seems more price sensible for the concept of the place– which I think is basically hipster bar? Like overly hipster bar. When I first went I only remember one burger (Seoul), now there are 4, and I seem to recall the majority of the menu being high teens low 20’s for $ and now there’s more of a $ 10 – 15 range available.
It’s interesting but a little confusing as the food is mostly Asian inspired, the ambiance is kinda dim, cutting edge, but 70’s retro (confusing? I know) bar feel, and the music and cocktails are all retro (slings and Sinatra… at least last night Sinatra, first time though was live ukulele night though which was cool/​cute for the first song then a little annoying).
Any way, the two times I’ve had food here I’ve found everything to be good but a little disappointing last night compared to first meal there. I’ve had the Seoul burger 2x, the sriacha wings, and the crispy pork belly. The first Seoul Burger impressed far more than last night’s. They USED to put kimchi on the burger, which really made it imo, but now they’ve subbed kimchi for a bun moistening spread of what I believe is the spicy mayo you get in a spicy tuna roll. Still good, but not as good. Sad face. Oh and last night I asked for my burger medium rare and it came out medium well at best. Sad face 2x. But it was still good and the egg definitely helped moisten up what would have been a dried out burger. Wings tasted great but still had those little feather hairs. Pork belly was great on some pieces, so-​so on others and generally lacking the hoison sauce.
Many of the drinks are tasty (the gin pomegranate rickey was a little bland), but my gripe with them is I feel that they’re often a little light on the booze. When I’m shelling out $ 9 – 10 on a drink I’d like to know you put more than a shot of something in a glass of otherwise nonalcoholic mixers.
Service at the tables is not particularly great. They kind of seem to do the whole server by committee thing where someone will take your order, someone else will take out your apps, someone else brings out your drinks, and then maybe a repeat for entrée. The problem with this is, 3x last night a server walked into the small corner dining area and tried delivering the wrong dish to the wrong table, then had to call out «Who had the _​_​_​_​_​_​??». Also, when we got our app to split between two people they dropped it off on its tiny serving plate (too small to cut on for even one person)…but offered no plates to actually eat off of. We had to flag a different server down to get some plates.
All in all, I really do generally like the food despite a few issues that I can overlook, but I think there are more consistent alternatives in the area that will really hurt the frequency of my visits to TT.

I came here one Friday night to dance, and dance is what I did. Although, don’t get there too early, like before 11:30 because you may be the only one on the dance floor and it is kind of awkward. Once it started picking up, the fun-​o-​meter raised a bit higher!
The house music was good, nothing is worse than when you are well on your way into the best cardio workout ever, and then BAM! The song gets all sucky and slow… you won’t get that here thank goodness.

I came in on a Friday night for a date with my girlfriend and everything seemed like it was going to work out until they seated us right in front of the bathroom. What ambiance! I don’t know who was in charge of setting up tables in this place but they need to learn a thing or two about proper placement in an establishment such as this.
Our waiter was a really nice guy who let us know that the kitchen was backed up so he suggested we order our food right away. — No problem, courteous waiter gets points for doing his job correctly. The thing that sucked is that the host who seated us, did so by giving us the worst possible two-​seater table right in front of the bathroom. Not only was it impossible to enjoy the atmosphere but we had to sit there dealing with people waiting to go into the bathroom so our entire date was spent with a large group of MIT students who were literally putting elbows into our dishes and bumping into our table in one of those ‘why are these people sitting here?’ manners.
The owner of the place walked by us at least 10 times and not once did he ask how everything was. I don’t know if he saw how visibly frustrated we were or not, but perhaps he thought it is better to piss of two people having dinner than a group of 15 rude MIT students.
Much like everyone else said, the beer list is extremely short. The food is ok even though my girlfriends veggie burger was cold and my fries were pretty soggy.
With everything said, I can deal with the food being ‘decent’ but I can’t enjoy my dinner when I’m seated in front of the bathroom with a bunch of drunken people pushing my table and jamming their elbow into my plate. We certainly won’t be back because truth be told, I enjoyed my food and the atmosphere at Flattop Johnny’s and The Blue Room a whole lot more than at this place.

Met up with a few friends for a drink and a meal recently. I did like the fact that they had ginger beer so I could make my favorite Moscow mule. We got a few apps, the edamame, which my uncultured friend chose to eat with the pod, the pot stickers, which were nondescript and also included in the bento box (more on that later), and the hot wings, which were nice and messy.
For entrees, I got the Seoul burger, good but a bit over cooked for my liking. Two of my friends got bento box B… On a positive note the ribs were great. On the other hand, the pot stickers were the same as the apps and one box definitely got more ribs than the other.
We were really looking forward to trying the bread pudding but sadly they were out.

1. Photo Booth means you’re guaranteed at least 3 stars if nothing else.
2. One of the bartenders has a heavy hand when pouring out whiskey, so there’s a win.
3. Bartenders aren’t afraid to stretch beyond the typical tequila and lemon drop shots. Ours made us a girl scout cookie, which I haven’t had since I lived inside a fully stocked bar and had a tendency to get bored on the weekend (crème de menthe, crème de cacao and vanilla vodka — one shot glass — delicious).
The jury is still out on whether or not this is a gay bar or not, but we did meet some straight whiskey-​and-​cosmo-​drinking MIT guys who were reading papers on brain development at the bar. I guess it’s proximity to MIT’s campus and its name should render that situation unsurprising. but I was still surprised. (Wait, I said they were drinking cosmos, didn’t I? Crap. All the cute ones are gay).
Super cool location too, it’s tucked in the back of the square, semi-​underground. Very clandestine. Small and dark inside with loud music and only a handful of patrons late on a Saturday night.
Pro tip: When using the photo booth, the money slot is under the seat your sitting on. This took us longer to figure out than I’m comfortable disclosing here.

Similar experience to many other folks on here — service was SLOW. Very very slow… we were a table of 7, at lunch time and the place was not busy and we were still there for 1.5 hours. Not cool at lunch for a week day.
The food was ok — no worth the money if you ask me. I had the curry chicken salad, the bottom of the sandwich was pretty burnt and there wasn’t a lot of stuffing. The salad dressing on the greens was tasty though.
I’m not rushing back anytime soon.

Poor, well-​meaning thing.
The service is friendly. The décor is interesting and sorta, kinda, vintage-​y (but not really). The music is great (classic rock – the only rock worth listening to). And the food? It has its moments. Unfortunately, everything except the service fell somewhat short of its full potential.
Pork belly and sriracha wings were awesome. But the chicken and ramen were… not. The chicken was juicy and tender, but bland with little seasoning. The ramen broth tasted like burnt vegetables (a result, I guess, of the slightly charred greens it came with), the noodles were strange instant-​ramen kind and the salmon add-​on was copious but extremely fatty.
Desserts: Coffee and donuts weren’t bad but I personally thought the coffee mousse got a little overwhelming after a while. The s’mores were too rich for me but tailor-​made for the boy, except he was not a fan of the dark chocolate. For cocky-​tails, I got the Negroni for Xmas but all the orange and chocolate was overwhelmed by the campari. Not a fan.
Think Tank, keep on reaching for those rainbows!

UGH. I hate angry reviews but this was horrible. I came today to lunch to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I ordered the ramen with hangar steak. We all shared the naan appetizer and thought it was fabulous. Service? Not so much…
SO 10 minutes after our appetizer the food arrives, NOT MINE! 10 minutes more for MY food to arrive, WRONG ORDER, 10 more minutes for the correct order to arrive WITHOUT STEAK. The waitress tells me she will comp my food, and I can wait another 10 more minutes if I would like the steak. No thanks, I’ll just eat my protein-​less lunch and not waste any more of my friends’ time.
After all of this we wait longingly for the bill. Finally our waitress comes with the bill and informs us that she couldn’t comp my meal but would be comping the steak — the steak that I was never served? Does this mean if she did not so *generously* comp my imaginary steak that I would have had to pay for it?
Lets just say it wasn’t the food that left a bad taste in my mouth…

For one day, okay, one night, no, one meal… put aside all thoughts of your current diet… go to the Think Tank, and order the crispy pork belly appetizer. When it is delivered to your table, hold off for a couple of minutes while the belly cools from tongue burning levels, then take a chuck of the other whit meat — meat/​fat/​skin and all — pop it into your mouth, and chew away… ahhhhh… heaven in your mouth! The chew (meat)/crisp (skin)/meltiness (fat) is a wonderful experience! (crispy pork belly * apple butter, pea sprouts, cranberry, pumpkin seed oil, smoked almond 9)
Then finish off with the coffee and donuts dessert — warm little hoops of fried dough with a sweet outer chewy outside layer was wonderful with the light cool airy chocolate mousse… mmmmm… (coffee and donuts * chicory coffee mousse, glazed donuts 7)
Those were the highlights of our meal.
Also high up there was the service provided by our friendly waitress who revealed to us the localvore tendencies of this establishment, and was willing to provide her opinions of the menu when requested. And she also let us know that the cotton candy maker was unfortunately out of commission.
Later, when I off-​handedly mentioned that the cold peanut noodles * chili carrot pickles, herb salad (v) 8 was too spicy for my enjoyment (it was a slow heat that snuck up on you) when she asked how things were, she volunteered that she could replace it with another appetizer for us. How nice!
Back to the peanut noodles though — it wasn’t particularly peanutty, but I have to admit that the portion was great for sharing.
Neither entrée stood out either for the better or the worse, but the grilled salmon * crispy skin, vanilla parsnip purée, cara cara/​pea sprout salad, citrus butter 23 was tender and the skin indeed crispy, and the duck confit * grilled iceberg wedge, local apples, bacon, great hill blue cheese, cider gastrique 22 arrived as two legs layered on top of one another, while the lettuce retained some crisp.
The homemade graham crackers from the s’mores * graham biscuits, toasted vanilla marshmallow, dark chocolate ganache 7 redeemed its kind in the opinions of my dc — the store bought sort being too dry and sawdusty. But otherwise, it wasn’t a standout, particularly in comparison to its competition. It probably didn’t help that it was served at room temperature despite the hint of warmth from the browning of the marshmallow.
The dining area beyond the bar was basically utilitarian, I guess. And the wooden floors didn’t help, but it was revealed by our server that this area becomes a dance floor, so what can you do? (see mirrored ball hanging from the ceiling)
There’s a Photo Booth standing by the doorway which leads to the bathrooms. For $ 3 you can leave with a photo souvenir of your visit! A tv was visible from where we sat, but was probably intended for the patrons of the bar. There’s a loungey area of sofas by the window. And they validate parking at the cinema lot! Good, since parking was tough to come by the night of our visit!
Purely based on the pork belly app and the coffee & donut dessert and the service rendered — 5 stars! But with everything else factored in… 3.5 stars I guess.

For being such a cool modernly-​styled environment in a cool location, ThinkTank has tired feel. The few times I’ve been there, both the staff and the diners seems tired and disinterested in being there.
The food is pretty okay and priced a little high for what it is, but it’s fine. This isn’t the kind of place I’d name as my favorite «go-​to» spot, especially since it seems to die out early in the evening. Overall, it’s just that — «pretty okay».

I’m glad that Think Tank has come to Kendall.
Have been here a few times in the past few weeks. Favorite things:
*Moscow Mules (though they need to get some copper mugs to serve em’ in!
*the tiki lounge
*the photo booth
*the fall flatbread
*Great veggie burger!
*great drink menu
*good service
I haven’t tried everything on the menu– the food is «pretty good” — not the best ever, but good and consistent and the menu is fun. It’s a fun place to grab a drink after work.

I felt quite lucky to be able to go to the Think Tank as the project was unfortunately born with little luck as right as they were about to originally open, a flood devastated the construction and almost forced them to shutter before being around for a even a mere single day of business.
Instead they cleaned their act up, and were reborn from their ashes, and are now joining their neighboring businesses in lovely Technology Square.
Upon entering, I felt like I was kind of transported into the ‘70s, only without all of the drugs and psychotropic drugs. The atmosphere in the place is… unique and features some dark tones, some vinyl boothes and some sleek-​looking tables. They are below street level but yet were crowded as we entered the place for some dinner.
We sat near the front, to the right of the entrance at a small table. My partner in crime, Simona «Moldova» S. sat against the booth while I sat opposite her in one of the chairs. Moments later we were brought menus and some ice-​cold water. The menus are Asian-​inspired, which I didn’t really think matched the décor of the place; It is a weird menu but I looked past the initial shock and decided to get the beet salad, which was tipped as being a great one on Unilocal.
For an entrée, after much debating, I spotted that they had some Vietnamese Banh Mi sandwiches which they offered in three various styles; roasted pork loin, duck confit or smoked eggplant. I love both pork and eggplant and couldn’t decide so I asked the waitress nicely if it would be possible for me to get both of those inside my sandwich, even if it cost extra. About two minutes later she came back, somewhat apologetic, telling me that it was not possible. I settled for pork but was rather surprised that they wouldn’t make the effort to satisfy my craving.
The beet salad was a very big disappointment, which came to a surprise considering that they are in season in the fall and winter. They were bland and poorly presented, in a small heap, covered in these tasteless cress, some gingered yogurt and some pistachios. According to their menu, three types of beets were used: red, gold and candy and they’ve made no effort to help one differentiate them, as they were slathered in the yogurt dressing making them impossible to recognize. I also noticed that they forgot to season the salad. If I were to grade the damn thing, I’d give it a D+ at best.
Despite the poor start to the meal, they did redeem themselves somewhat with the Banh Mi sandwich. Despite not letting me have both pork and eggplant in it, the pork sandwich arrived, accompanied by a small green salad which had some Asian flair to it as they added what seemed like daikon radish. The sandwich featured some pork, some bibb lettuce, herbs and some spicy carrot pickle. The bread was not as crisp as I would have liked but their cumin aioli sauce binded and complimented everything well. But I didn’t sport any of the traditional Banh Mi ingredients although the sandwich tasted very similar. Either their menu is wrong of they still had some of the usual culprit ingredients in it, which would mean that cilantro, daikon and carrots might and could have been present. It was decent enough and at only $ 8, rather filling. A pretty good value actually. I’d give it a B.
I also had a $ 9 cocktail, which was their Black Manhattan. It featured some Rittenhouse rye, some Meletti amaro and some barrel aged bitters. It was pretty well balanced and tasted pretty good. Sweeter than the usual Manhattan’s I’ve had.
My verdict on the place is that although their efforts to stand out are clear through their menu and décor, I still feel like they’ve missed the mark. The location is great and they are surrounded by some of the smartest people around. Instead of a 70’s retro theme, with their décor and old school video game arcade machines which are collecting dust in one of the establishment’s corner, they should have gone for a nerdier theme. Maybe a chemistry theme could have been fun? MIT is only a couple of blocks away for crying out loud. The theme is just too weird and I don’t feel like the place really belongs in Technology Square. And as far as the service goes, it was quite spotty throughout the night. Maybe I’ll return in a little while to see if things improve, after all, the place opened fairly recently… Fingers crossed that they’ll get it together.