Alice & Monarch brings Italian dinners and dessert speakeasy to Kendall Square

Alice & Monarch opened in Kendall Square with a simple pitch and a clever split: dinner upstairs at Alice, then dessert and cocktails downstairs at Monarch if the night is still going. At 238 Main St. in Cambridge, the two-level project from Daniel Roughan gives Kendall Square something the district has long wanted, a place that feels built for lingering instead of clearing out after the check.

Upstairs, Alice is framed as a modern Italian taverna with a menu that leans hard on shareable plates and the kind of pasta dishes that make a table settle in. The lineup includes a raviolo with duck egg yolk and whipped ricotta, scallop ceviche, squid ink linguine, mushroom and truffle risotto, pizza, a chicken for two and a 16-ounce ribeye. It is the sort of menu that works whether a party wants to split a few starters and a pasta or make a whole evening out of larger-format dishes.

Monarch, downstairs, changes the tempo. The subterranean room is built as a dessert-and-drinks hideaway, with a baked Alaska and toasted bread ice cream that is meant to read like an affogato with a little more theater. That second act is the difference-maker here. Instead of sending diners back out into Kendall Square after dinner, the concept gives them a reason to stay for another round, another plate and a slower finish.

Roughan is leaning on experience that already shaped a loyal following at Source in Harvard Square, which opened in November 2020 at the former Cambridge Engine 1 site. Source was pitched as a farm-to-table pizzeria and gastropub sourcing ingredients within 100 miles, and Roughan’s restaurant group says he has spent 20 years in hospitality and nine years as director of operations for the Varano Group. The same materials say he helped open Fratelli in Encore Boston Harbor, described there as the largest hospitality opening in Massachusetts history and on the East Coast in the past decade.

The opening also fits the way Kendall Square has been changing around MIT and the City of Cambridge’s push to make the district feel more like a neighborhood than an office park. Business and civic groups have described it as a growing hub for restaurants, shops, housing, hotels, MIT and life-science and technology firms, with a deliberate bump factor meant to get people meeting and connecting. Alice & Monarch plays directly into that rhythm: dinner for the after-work crowd, a polished but not stuffy stop for date night, and a late-night downstairs escape for anyone who wants the evening to keep moving. Breakfast and lunch were set to follow the opening, but the real hook is already clear: one reservation can now cover the whole night.