I welcome anomalies. Things out of their usual places, things outsized or downsized, things of colors not their own or shapes not found in nature. As the anthropologist Mary Douglas put it, “matter out of place.” (Although she was referring to cultural concepts of dirt, which I am not.)

I’m a creature of habit, however, in coffee, particularly in the morning, when it needs to be within a rather narrow range of roast and brew style. But coffee in an unusual setting and with unexpected accompaniments can wake me out of my morning stupor. Sitar music at 8:30 a.m., an “ube” muffin in its shockingly purple glory, a fresh tomato salad with thick toast and warm whipped hummus with a puddle of butter on a thin-sliced sesame bagel-like base… see what I mean? Delicious, but not usually on my menu.

This is why we go to new places, travel outside our familiar zones and seek surprises. 

In a Cambridge neighborhood full of people whose curiosity has led to Nobel prizes, fantastic scientific discoveries and long-sought cures are two curious places for coffee and other things unexpected, at least by me. As Lewis Carroll wrote, “curiouser and curiouser.”

Vida

The large windows of Vida reveal passersby on Broadway, and you can glimpse people heading next door to eat at Mulan or walking head down, possibly glued to a phone, toward the laboratories and offices nearby. Inside, clean bright walls frame the rectangular room, and six small tables and a counter seat breakfast-into-lunch customers. Pots of perfect orchids, a traditional Asian “grand opening” offering, are a tipoff that this wasn’t, despite the name, a Hispanic affair. Staff at the long counter take and make orders and set up for yet-to arrive visitors, filling a counter box with cellophane-bagged buns, with compartments labeled “pandan cranberry bao,” “red bean matcha bao,” “custard bao” and more. A screen above has more surprises, such as a “Deluxe Bolo Bao” stuffed with ham, egg, bacon, melted cheese, cucumber … is it a breakfast bao? 

I asked for a custard bao. It was wrapped in cellophane that read “Now I know there are good people in the world who do good things. You are good people. Thank you.” I saved the bag for later when I might need such verbal encouragement and ate the optimistic bun. Sweet and yellow with a center of baked custard, it reminded me of the Portuguese-style bread I first had years ago in Hong Kong, or perhaps it was Macau. 

Staff will say the style of this café is Asian, but that’s complicated. There’s “Hong Kong style Milk Tea” on the menu and of course “bao” is the familiar Chinese bun. Red beans and matcha, China and Japan. When you consider the Portuguese influence on Chinese breads, sweet and puffy, and consider the English style milk tea in the former British colony of Hong Kong, the anomalous aspects of this café begin to make sense: It evokes a particular Asia with various colonial experiences influencing its food and drink.

It got more complicated when I asked about the coffees, which are Colombian and Filipino. It seems that the owners are of Chinese heritage and from Colombia. I’ll have to go back to pursue the Filipino connection. 

The final, delicious curiosity was the crème brûlée. A large batch of individual custards came warm from the kitchen, and our staff person said she’d made them. Offering us one, she took out a butane torch, sprinkled the custard with sugar and torched it to a dark mahogany brown. Cooled just a bit, the brûlée was crisp-topped, silky smooth and creamy. Another surprise, a lovely moment, a delectable treat.

Third Time Together

It was about time that I set foot in TTT, whose ice cream had been on my mind but not my tongue. I’d heard of its Basil Cheong, its Hōjicha Card Never Declines and other curiously named ice creams, and someone said it had a good hot dog and was very good at coffee. 

The room, next to the Kendall Cinema, is L-shaped with a few small tables and a counter with a full view of the kitchen operations. Nick Ladin-Sienne and his wife worked up the flavors of ice cream, in continuous inventive flow, by running pop-ups at Tilde, in Bow Street Market and elsewhere. Ladin-Sienne quoted his father, who said, “Ice cream is the solution to all life’s problems,” which is almost persuasive. My own mantra, “But first coffee,” takes precedence. The coffee is Broadsheet, which TTT started using for coffee-flavored ice cream. And to my approval it mostly uses a medium-to-light roast. 

When I walked in for the first time and saw Ladin-Sienne wearing a Superiority Burger T-shirt, I knew that this place at the very least would be imaginative and interesting. The café-restaurant in Manhattan to which the shirt refers has some of the best and most interesting ice cream ever and, to tie it more firmly to TTT,  a fascinating savory menu, though it is vegetarian and TTT is not. 

On my second visit, I had one of the curious menu items, a Levantine Dog. The top-loaded bun with a dog, sauerkraut, zhoug and amba had a satisfactory fermentation quotient mellowed by the amba’s mango hit. I loved it. Zhoug is something I make when I have herbs on the edge of gone – especially cilantro and parsley – and a jalapeño and some garlic and shallots. (It also freezes well.) Amba is newer to me, but it is a staple in Israeli and Eastern Mediterranean restaurants. In Cambridge, it headlines in the eponymous Amba Café run by chef Will Gilson: It is a bright turmeric-colored mango-chili sauce that I can eat by the spoonful. In such a playful place as Third Time Together, I suggest another name for the amba: I am Curious (Yellow).

There is a Persian-Jewish meatball sub with a shakshukalike tomato sauce and kashkaval cheese. Clues to the curious mix of flavors, dishes and names can be found in a tall bookcase full of cookbooks and in Nick’s history of cooking at Ana Sortun’s Oleana and Sofra. Next time, I’ll eat through the mezze, get the Al Pastor(ish) and the Iraq Me (Amadeus). 

The drink and the food are stimulating in references, tastes and irreverence. But aren’t you wondering at the shop name, as I did? Nick explained that when you run into someone unexpectedly for the second time (as in, “We can’t go on meeting like this!”), you say that should you meet a third time by surprise, one owes the other a beer – or an ice cream. 

Vida, 222 Broadway, The Port, Cambridge (8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday; 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday)

Third Time Together, 399 Binney St., Kendall Square, Cambridge (7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday to Friday; 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday)

Corky White, a food anthropologist at Boston University, has lived in Cambridge since 1953 with long sojourns in Japan. She has written articles on coffee for Standart Magazine and books including “Cooking for Crowds” (in its 40th Anniversary edition) “Coffee Life in Japan” and, with her son, Ben Wurgaft, “Ways of Eating.” Corky is grounded in coffee and welcomes suggestions at cwhite@csindie.com.

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Corky White

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