Nibble Kitchen is thriving at its Bow Market location, offering international culinary treats to its patrons. — Photos by Fernando Cervantes Jr

By Fernando Cervantes Jr.

Dishes from all over the world are currently being served at Nibble Somerville, a local kitchen. The kitchen, located at Union Square’s Bow Market, has been serving bites since September 2019.

Sponsored by the Somerville Arts Council, the kitchen is part of an initiative to highlight immigrant communities and cuisines in Somerville. Currently the kitchen serves the three cuisines mentioned before from Thursday to Sunday.

The peculiar aspect of the menu: each cuisine is represented on different days of the week. According to their website, Bengali cuisine is served on Wednesdays and Fridays, Salvadoran pupusas are served on Thursdays and Saturdays and Venezuelan arepas are served on Sundays.

Cultural Director of the Somerville Arts Council Rachel Strutt spoke on the founding of the kitchen and the reasons behind it. “Nibble Kitchen is a restaurant at Bow Market in Union Square which celebrates the talents of cooks and chefs from our immigrant communities,” Strutt said.

Moreover, the kitchen has a deeper purpose: to be a proving ground for up-and-coming chefs.

According to Strutt, Nibble gives these chefs a taste of what running a kitchen is like, in order to use this experience in the future. “[The kitchen] gives cooks an opportunity to learn about what it entails to pursue a culinary profession,” Strutt said.

Strutt offered some details on how Nibble provides assistance to these chefs, through connections and other types of help, citing a recent example with one of their chefs. “With the Carolinas, for example, we worked with them to connect them with people within the city and outside to advise them,” Strutt said.

The restaurant has now been open for more than two years. Like many restaurants, it was affected by the COVID pandemic, but Stutt considers Nibble one of the lucky ones, as they weathered the pandemic fairly well. “It’s essentially a to-go restaurant, so when some restaurants with big dining rooms were super hard hit, I think Nibble was able to eschew that quite a bit,” Strutt said.

Looking towards the future, Strutt hopes to hold regular cooking classes at Nibble Kitchen in order to connect Somerville residents to new cuisines. “We want to expand our programming to include cooking classes and we just held our first cooking class. It was our first one in about four years,” Strutt said.