Boston chef Brian Poe expands POE-Lenta with Hub Hall location

Brian Poe has pushed POE-Lenta out of the market stall lane and into one of Boston’s busiest food halls. The new location at Hub Hall on Causeway was already open, giving the Italian café a second stage inside TD Garden, steps from North Station and squarely in the path of office workers, commuters, tourists, and arena crowds.

That move matters because POE-Lenta was never built as a one-note pasta counter. Poe and co-creator Guillermo Guzman shaped it as a flexible Italian café, the kind of place that can sell handmade pasta one hour and sandwiches, salads, and seasonal specials the next. The original outpost debuted at Time Out Market Boston in November 2024, and the response there appears to have given Poe room to scale the idea without sanding off its personality.

Hub Hall is a fitting fit for that expansion. Operated by Patina Restaurant Group, the venue bills itself as a Boston destination with 18 food and drink options, and its traffic is exactly the kind that rewards quick, recognizable comfort food. At Hub Hall, POE-Lenta leans into that model with scratch-made sauces, hearty pastas, and a playful streak that keeps the menu from feeling like a standard red-sauce play. The food hall highlights the Bison Meatball Sub and the Wild Game Bolognese, made with wild boar, bison, and yak, alongside the concept’s broader Italian comfort-food pitch.

That broader pitch is the point. POE-Lenta is not trying to win by serving only one signature dish; it is building a brand around accessible food with a chef-driven edge, from fresh pastas to handcrafted sandwiches and richer plates like wild game bolognese and bison meatballs. Poe’s long Boston resume helps the concept land with more weight. He opened The Tip Tap Room on Beacon Hill in June 2012, and in 2020 he created Crane River Cheese Club, which grew into a boutique grocery, butchery, and catering storefront.

The Hub Hall opening shows that Boston still has room for a pasta-forward fast-casual concept when it has a clear point of view. POE-Lenta has moved from one market to another without losing the thing that made it work in the first place: pasta as identity, not gimmick, now playing in a louder, busier room.