I was really looking forward to trying Clover Food Lab while visiting Boston after hearing about their commitment to sustainability, plant-based eating, and local ingredients. We dropped by this location in the Pru for dinner one day, and our experience was just okay.
We ordered a bunch of different things - the verde rice and bean bowl with Tender "chicken," the Mediterranean bowl with Impossible kofta, and sides of falafel and fries with rosemary (the last of which came free thanks to signing up for their email list). I appreciated that the app had detailed ingredient and allergen info, making ordering decisions easier, and that they use vegan mayo in a lot of their sauces, making the dishes more accessible.
We ordered on the app, figuring that it was showing what was available at the time, but apparently, it didn't update for things that were out of stock, as we got a notification while waiting that one of our items (the verde bowl) was just unavailable and would be refunded. Despite our order being even smaller now, the wait time went well beyond the estimate in the app, and after going to pick up our order, I realized that they hadn't included the side of falafel that was supposed to be there. Overall, not a great service experience, especially given that they weren't busy.
The food itself was okay. The salads in the Mediterranean bowl were great, especially the pickled cabbage and the chickpea eggplant pepper salad. The proteins were cold and dry, even though they were supposed to be made fresh to order. The fries weren't really anything special, even though they hype them up at the store with videos about them on the wall.
I don't know if this was our experience because of the location (since it was relatively empty after the office workers were gone for the day), as I can't imagine that, at such an expensive price point, they could have lasted this long with so many stores if everyone was getting this level of service. I would be open to trying them again at a different location, but not sure I'd come back to this one. read more