Playska, Bronwyn's Little Sibling, Has Closed in Inman Square [UPDATED]

Just short of the six-month mark, Playska has closed its doors in Inman Square, according to a sign posted outside:

Last week, the restaurant showed up on the agenda for a Cambridge licensing hearing with the request to change its name from Playska to Bronwyn's Deli and Bakery, according to Boston Restaurant Talk. (The restaurant was the younger sibling of Bronwyn in Somerville and T.W. Food in Cambridge; they're all owned by Tim and Bronwyn Wiechmann.) At this time, it's unclear if Playska will be reborn under a new name. (See update at the bottom.)

Located in the former Rosie's Bakery space, Playska was an Eastern and Central Europe-inspired sandwich shop featuring the playska, Tim's take on the Balkan dish pljeskavica. It was the Wiechmanns' first quick-service restaurant, a departure from the fine-dining T.W. Food and the slightly more casual Bronwyn, and it was a place for Tim to practice his loves of both sausage-making and bread-making.

"We wanted to do something new, innovative, exciting, different for us," Tim previously told Eater. "We have fine dining, we have a bar, and now I'd like to work on bread, on a bakery — a different skill-set, really. It's a combination of a lot of the traveling that we were doing and stuff I've been doing for fun in the kitchen."

In addition to sandwiches, Playska's menu included a small selection of soups and salads, a variety of house-made pickles, kolache, and some other pastries. Eater has reached out for more information on Playska's closure, and this story will be updated when more details become available.

UPDATE, 4/13/16: "I've opened three restaurants, and this is my first closing, so I don't have a lot of answers," Tim told Eater. "I do know that most everything that Bronwyn and I have done has been borne out of her and I really collaborating as partners. Since we're married, our work sort of embodies us, and Playska just didn't fit. There were things about Playska that I'm very proud of that I thought were very good, but the biggest thing is that it was just too much work. It was, to a certain degree, an uphill battle in terms of the concept, and really it was about me and Bronwyn figuring out that we're not really lunch people. We sort of found out who we are, and we decided that we just didn't want to do it anymore."

"With T.W., we have nine years of us building that, being together, making it the best we can be," he continued. "With Bronwyn, it's all about my background and her loving hospitality, and lunch, fast-casual, is not really like that. It's a grab-and-go situation."

They had considered redoing the space as a deli for Bronwyn, hence the proposed name change. "But we realized we don't really want a deli," said Tim. "We had to try it to find out if we wanted it. We put it out there, for better or for worse. The food that we produced there, I totally believe in it. The cvapis are going to find a home somewhere. I'm not done with the concept; I'm not pushing away that type of cooking. It's just the format that didn't really work for us. If we had opened a 25-seat bar, it would have been a different story. My wife loves running the bar, and this was a breakfast, coffee, lunch situation — it's just not who we are. It's emotional because we put so much into our restaurants, but it's also true that we're just not those kind of people. We're nighttime restaurateurs, I guess."

Grid View

• Playska in Inman Square. Photos by Rachel Leah Blumenthal for Eater.
• Low-tops and a high-top.
• Pickled things.
• Some greenery in the vestibule.
• Beverages and pickled things.
• Preparing the signature playska sandwich.
• The playska.
• Pickled things.
• Wrapping up the playska.
• Pickled beet and red onion.
• The first few customers on opening day.
• Sheet cake with a burek in the background.
• A steady line quickly appeared shortly after the doors opened.