Brains and beer
By Carrie Lock

MIRACLE OF SCIENCE BAR AND GRILL
321 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, 617-868-2866
Central Square T-stop

Sometimes it seems inevitable that a particular neighborhood house a particular restaurant, as if the fates themselves deemed it so. Miracle of Science fits so perfectly with nearby MIT that it’s almost symbiotic. Located a few blocks from the ethnic restaurants and funky boutiques that dot Mass Ave in Cambridge, the casual American eatery has a style all its own: geek, and loving it.

The restaurant itself is small and charming, in that bland high-ceilings-and-exposed-brick way so typical of many American bars—except for the science. There are no laminated menus here. A mock periodic table displays the food choices, organized by genre: appetizers instead of alkali metals, desserts instead of noble gasses. The slate gray lab tables remind you of high school chemistry class, as do the microscope, gyroscope, and some sort of old-fashioned meter sitting atop the bar. (Amp meter? voltmeter? ohmmeter? You almost feel guilty for not being able to recognize it on sight, as if the bar expects you to be as well-versed in science as it is.) Geometric patterns are everywhere, most visibly in the giant triangle-themed light hanging prominently in the center of the bar. Was it supposed to look like a Klingon warship, or was my dinner companion just starting to see science wherever she looked? It’s hard to tell, but it’s a unique way to hide a smoke detector and certainly makes for interesting conversation.

The crowd, too, was different from that at most college joints. MIT students and local professionals, as expected, perched on the bar stools enjoying draft beers, with one alarming exception—a notable dearth of women. The one female in the entire restaurant (outside of our party) was our waitress, Ashleigh, whose fetching pink blouse added a dash of femininity to an otherwise overwhelming sea of testosterone and plaid. Ashleigh, however, disputed the notion that women shy away from Miracle of Science, claiming that the night before, 50 women held a management conference under the glow of the Klingon warship light. Thursday, however, is a biker crowd – “science bikers,” Ashleigh says.