About Little Donkey
When Ken Oringer and Jamie Bissonnette — two James Beard Award winners with a portfolio that includes Toro, Coppa, and Uni — decided to open a restaurant in Cambridge's Central Square in 2016, the neighbourhood was not expecting anything as good as what arrived. Little Donkey at 505 Massachusetts Avenue is a global tapas bar that takes the restless curiosity of two chefs who travel extensively and translates it directly onto the plate, without the restraint that a more formal format would impose.
The menu is a document of Oringer and Bissonnette's particular obsessions at any given moment. Istanbul meat ravioli, plump and fragrant with warm spices; ramen cacio e pepe, a collision of Japanese noodle craft and Roman pasta tradition that should not work and absolutely does; a raw bar that runs from oysters to Japanese preparations of whatever the market offers that morning. The menu changes with the frequency of chefs who are genuinely interested in what they are cooking rather than what the system requires — repeat visits within a month will present a substantially different menu from the first.
The restaurant also accommodates the full range of dietary preferences without the apologetic quality that usually accompanies vegan and vegetarian options in meat-centric restaurants. The kitchen's global reach means that vegetables and legumes are treated with the same creative investment as proteins — a Middle Eastern-inspired preparation of cauliflower, or a Japanese-influenced dashi broth around root vegetables, carries the same culinary weight as anything else on the menu. This makes Little Donkey unusually practical for diverse groups.
The Dining Experience
Little Donkey's room reflects Central Square's particular character: it is livelier, more casual, and more genuinely diverse than the Cambridge restaurant scene that tends to cluster around Harvard and Kendall Squares. The dining room accommodates groups well, with communal table options and a bar that accommodates solo diners and couples with equal ease. The noise level is higher than at Giulia or Ostra — this is a restaurant designed for energy rather than contemplation — and the service carries the nimble informality of a kitchen that values the guest's engagement over their deference.
The raw bar is a particular strength: oysters are selected with the same attention that the kitchen gives to the rest of the menu, and the oyster program rotates with East and West Coast selections based on condition and availability rather than habit. A plate of oysters and a glass of something cold is one of the better simple pleasures that Central Square has to offer.
Why Little Donkey for Team Dinners
The global small-plates format is the native environment of team building. At Little Donkey, the decision-making that a large shared menu requires — which plates to order, how many, in what sequence — creates collaborative dynamics that a team dinner is supposed to generate but rarely does when everyone orders their own entrée. The price point is sane for a group (no one is going to wince at the receipt), the menu is varied enough to satisfy the full range of dietary preferences, and the room's energy is high enough to create the kind of evening people remember. This is the team dinner that actually works.
Why Little Donkey for Solo Dining
Bar seating at Little Donkey is among the more pleasurable solo dining experiences in Greater Boston. The bar faces the open kitchen — you watch the production, you ask questions, you are answered. The small-plates format is designed for solo assembly: order three or four plates over the course of an hour and a half, move through the raw bar, try the ramen cacio e pepe without committing to a full bowl. The wine and cocktail list, assembled with the same global curiosity as the food menu, rewards exploration at a price that does not make a solo evening feel like extravagance.
Reservation Strategy
Little Donkey takes reservations by phone at 617-945-1008. The restaurant is walk-in friendly on weeknights, with bar seating typically available without advance notice. Weekend evenings — particularly Friday and Saturday — are the most competitive, but the Central Square location means fewer of the bridge-and-tunnel dynamics that affect Back Bay restaurants. Arrive before 6:30pm on a weekend and a bar seat is usually available without a wait.