French Restaurant Connected to a South End Favorite Will Open in Porter Square

A French restaurant with connections to two others in the Boston area will open within a new hotel in Cambridge’s Porter Square later this year: Colette is slated to open at the fairly new Porter Square Hotel (1924 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge), according to Cambridge Day, and it will be run by Loic Le Garrec and Sandrine Rossi, who are behind Frenchie in the South End, a 2017 nominee for Eater Boston’s Restaurant of the Year. Le Garrec is also behind Petit Robert Bistro.

The journey to the hotel’s restaurant opening has been in the works for several years. The Porter Square hotel opened in 2016, but a planned ground-floor restaurant did not. Early reports indicated that it would be a steakhouse called Porter House Grill, as a nod to both the area’s prior history as a home to cattle yards and several claims that the neighborhood is the birthplace of the porterhouse steak cut.

Plans for the steakhouse fell through, however, and now Colette will step into the role of hotel restaurant, accommodating about 150 people inside in the dining room and bar area, with 30 additional patio seats. Potential menu items include steak frites, lobster ravioli, a burger with fois gras aioli, French onion soup, and steak tartare, though an official menu is not yet available.

Expect to see Colette debut some time this summer.

• Porter Square, Prepare to Meet Colette, Restaurant With Strong French Accent [CD]
• Porter Square, Once Home to Cattle Yards, Will Get Beefed up With a Steakhouse [EBOS]