Welcome Home, If Your Home Had a Basement Cocktail-and-Dessert Bar

Alice. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Steps from the buzz of the Kendall Square T stop, within a tech hub that’s enjoying a bit of a culinary renaissance, there’s a new welcoming, greenery-filled dining room and bar for pizza, pasta, and other Italian-inspired delights. Downstairs, nestled past portraits of monarchs, is a subterranean dessert speakeasy. Together, they form Alice & Monarch, a new dual-concept venture from Daniel Roughan, who also runs Source in Harvard Square. He’s spent the last several years building a restaurant that offers two interpretations of a good night out, stacked on top of each other.

Grissine with whipped ricotta and EVOO at Alice. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Alice & Monarch is much grander in scale than the six-year-old Source, a cozy farm-to-table gastropub that features award-winning, Neapolitan-inspired pizzas. But Roughan’s restaurants share an ethos: “Welcome home.” The words are painted right above Source’s front door, and the restaurant does have a decidedly homey feel, with warm service and a bustling atmosphere. At Alice & Monarch, that welcoming vibe remains. Here, it’s your grandmother’s home on the ground floor, where you share Italian feasts with friends and family, and your fanciest friend’s swanky basement hideaway downstairs, if your fanciest friend happens to be a cocktail expert and pastry chef.

Stuffed zucchini blossoms at Alice. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

In a city increasingly full of large restaurant groups, Alice & Monarch is solely owned by Roughan and truly a labor of love. He has envisioned it as an homage to three Alices who have impacted his life, and a philosophy each represents. First, there’s his grandma Alice, who embodied hospitality. When a neighboring family was struggling after job loss, she opened her doors and cooked for them, says Roughan. “Everything about Alice was love, giving, and service.” Next, Alice in Wonderland, representing imagination and creativity. “I view the world through childlike lenses, and that’s something I don’t want to lose,” says Roughan. And finally restaurateur multi-hyphenate Alice Waters, “the godmother of farm-to-table food in America,” says Roughan, who was greatly inspired by her work when he opened Source. “I always knew that at some point in my career, I’d want to pay homage to those three pillars in my life.”

Alice. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Those philosophies meld with Roughan’s “welcome home” mantra. On the customer side, it encompasses warm hospitality, or as Roughan puts it, “elevated service given by a friend”; relative affordability (he’s hopeful people can come to Alice & Monarch for “everyday celebrations”); and inclusivity, in part represented by a strong nonalcoholic drink program.

Garganelli with sungold tomatoes, fennel soffritto, and hazelnuts at Alice. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

But “welcome home” isn’t just about customers: “It’s also for the staff,” says Roughan. “Now I have a larger opportunity to provide something for them, value them, create a home for them, just like my Grandma Alice made everyone feel at home with a mentality of serving and giving unconditionally.” To that end, Roughan strives to create a healthy working environment unlike what he’s experienced in other restaurant industry jobs over his career: He offers, for instance, 401(k) matching, work schedules in advance, and “the vacation time [employees] deserve.”

Alice. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

At the root of it all, Roughan is simply driven to serve. As a kid, he started volunteering regularly at a soup kitchen for veterans, spending over a decade there, and the way he could change a moment of someone’s day stuck with him. Running a business on the scale of Alice & Monarch, he looks forward to taking customers away from their troubles for a couple hours. “All this headache [of opening the restaurant] is going to be worth it,” he says, “on that first night when I step back and watch when that food or drink hits, when friends take a bite and smile. I’ve erased everything outside for them. It might not last long, but it’s such a kickass feeling.”

Jumbo prawn with miso butter and charred bread at Alice. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

So while that service-driven mentality forms a common thread between the main level (Alice) and the basement (Monarch), the spaces have quite distinct personalities. Alice is for settling in for a dinner of salumi, pastas, pizzas, and more, cozy on a floral-patterned, curved banquette. Monarch is for a downstairs nightcap (or a standalone visit) where you venture past portraits of royalty who “made significant contributions to the growth and transformation of the world,” says Roughan, for a complex cocktail and beautifully plated dessert. (This isn’t a love-fest for monarchy, mind you. “We’re living in a world that was created by them, whether you like them or not,” says Roughan. It’s more a meditation on transformation and metamorphosis, with the monarch butterfly as much a symbol as the literal monarchs on the walls.)

Ribeye alla Palermo with polenta at Alice. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Alice, for its part, is a “modern Italian taverna with a culinary approach [inspired by] a lot of what you’d find in Italy’s farms and backcountry,” says Roughan. There’s a rusticity to it, sure—and four fresh bread selections, three of which use Source’s sourdough starter—but there’s finesse, too. Executive chef Brian Kevorkian, who’s also executive chef and partner at Source, has an impressive resume, including New York’s Eleven Madison Park and San Francisco’s Gary Danko. Roughan is excited to give Kevorkian space to play. “I feel like I’m giving him a kitchen,” he says. “Not to say that Source isn’t a kitchen, but Source is an oven. A wood-fired oven with a little six-burner thing in the back, and two burners are always taken up by a big pot of pasta water.”

Cocktails at Alice. On the left, First Look Back is a reverse martini with Condesa gin, blanc vermouth, watermelon, and bay leaf oil. On the right, the Strawberry Top Negroni is made with Bombay Sapphire, Campari, Dolin Chamberyzette, fig leaf, and coffee leaf. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Here, Kevorkian is dreaming up small plates like a head-on jumbo prawn with miso butter and charred bread; charred rabe with chili, shaved garlic, and lemon confit; and duck egg yolk ravioli with whipped ricotta, hazelnut, and black truffle. Larger entrées include dry-aged duck with a honey coat and brown butter confit and a ribeye with extra-large duck fat steak fries. There are customizable meat and cheese boards with all the fixings, and there are “neo” pizzas—think Neapolitan-inspired, but Alice doesn’t have a wood-fired oven, so they’re not technically Neapolitan. “The dishes are truly a reflection of a home-cooked meal,” says Roughan, waxing nostalgic for his early 20s in Chicago. “My friend group would have a big Sunday dinner and then watch The Sopranos and Sex and the City,” he says. “We were all [restaurant] industry kids, so we could all cook and have these huge meals with wine and cocktails. That’s really what I wanted this menu to be about.” Alice is about family, chosen and biological alike.

Monarch. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

On the drink side, beverage director James Sutter and principle bartender and production lead Rodrigo Ignacio Castillo are running the show. They both worked at bars in the Baldwin Bar family, its venues known for intricate cocktails. At Alice, the drinks are “inspired by Italian aperitivo classics,” says Sutter, with some creative liberties. Take the Strawberry Top Negroni, for instance: Strawberry vermouth adds a light, floral complement to the Campari’s bitterness. Plus, Castillo teases the eventual introduction of a Jell-o shot flight at brunch, with each selection playing on sparkling wine breakfast cocktails. And whatever the service, and whether upstairs at Alice or downstairs at Monarch, nonalcoholic drinks are given just as much thought as their spirited counterparts. “We’re trying to make them dynamic and complex,” says Sutter. Castillo adds: “Our NA program is going to be one of the strongest, not just in Cambridge, but I think in Massachusetts.”

Baked Alaska at Monarch (spring pea ice cream, coconut cake, makrut lime syrup, meringue). / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Downstairs, Monarch showcases the sweet skills of pastry chef Samantha Yang. (And don’t we need more dessert-focused spots? We’re a decade past the closure of the last Finale Desserterie, and few have taken up the mantle. Zuzu’s Petals in Inman Square is a rare, and lovely, exception.) Spring pea ice cream and makrut lime syrup add a zing to baked Alaska; espresso granita melds with toasted bread ice cream, mascarpone cream, and hot butterscotch sauce for a spin on an affogato. There are some savory bites, too—such as toast with steak and bone marrow “cotton candy” or artichoke-and-rabbit arancini—but you’ll want to save plenty of room for the main event.

Dessert and a Gilded Orchard cocktail at Monarch, made with Elijah Craig bourbon, Pierre Ferrand 1840 cognac, calvados miso butter, and Amaro Nardini. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

At Monarch, the cocktails are “definitely more worldy” than at Alice in terms of inspiration and flavor profiles, says Sutter. “No holds barred when it comes to what we can incorporate.” Many of the drinks are “inspired by monarchs and their relationship with their people, with agriculture, and with different foodways,” he adds. Take the Gilded Orchard, for instance, an Old Fashioned variation with a hint of umami, made with Elijah Craig bourbon, Pierre Ferrand 1840 cognac, calvados miso butter, and Amaro Nardini. It references the historical hardship of heavy taxation of agricultural products, from apples to grains. “We have long-winded stories behind every beverage,” says Sutter, and the team is happy to discuss, “but we also just want to be a cocktail bar.” Engage with the backstory, if you please, or just enjoy a well-made drink—whatever makes you feel at home.

Monarch. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

That idea of “welcome home” is especially poignant in a tech-driven neighborhood like Kendall, parts of which have traditionally struggled to come to life at night. Alice & Monarch joins a burgeoning culinary crew on this side of town, from Shy Bird and Row 34 to Broken Cup Teahouse and Eastern Edge Food Hall, each adding warmth and heart in recent years. What better time and place for Roughan to grow his restaurant family?

Toasted almond cremeux with pickled rhubarb at Monarch, accompanied by the carbonated Echo Chamber cocktail, with Tequila Ocho Plata, celery, and dry vermouth. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Opening Friday, May 8, 2026, for dinner, with plans for brunch and lunch service to begin the following week; reservations available for Alice here and Monarch here. 238 Main St., Kendall Square, Cambridge, 857-856-5055, aliceandmonarch.com. 

Desserts and drinks at Monarch. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal