Levantine Hot Dogs and Award-Winning Ice Cream Get a Cambridge Home
Third Time Together, a pop-up previously at Bow Market and the Charles River Speedway, is now permanently in Kendall Square.
Third Time Together. / Photo by Siena Griffin
Among the ice cream flavors Nick Ladin-Sienne has dreamed up: “Spicy Buds,” a grapefruit sherbet spiked with marmalade and tongue-tingling timur pepper; “PSPSP,” a purple sweet potato and salted pandan blend; and balsamic mascarpone swirled with fig. These are the kinds of creations that earned Ladin-Sienne’s Third Time Ice Cream a Best of Boston award when it was a mere pop-up in Somerville’s Bow Market—and now the Tufts graduate’s radically inventive concoctions have a permanent home, operating under the new name Third Time Together, an ice cream shop and all-day cafe occupying the former Gracie’s Ice Cream/Earnest Drinks space in Kendall Square.
Treats at Third Time Together, including croissants from Iggy’s, feta-za’atar bread, and a lemon bergamot bar, with a cappuccino. / Photo by Siena Griffin
The new Cambridge space offers over 1,000 square feet, a far cry from Third Time’s original 150-square-foot Bow Market stall in Union Square. “It’s our first time on our own, not in a food court environment,” says Sari Ladin-Sienne, who runs the business with husband Nick. Here, the couple showcase inventive ice cream flavors from behind a 17-foot-long counter, seat 20 at cozy wooden tables, and also serve sharable plates, stuffed pitas, and coffee. “It’s very exciting to have places where people can sit, stay, and enjoy,” adds Nick, a cook who went into law, only to return to cooking.
Third Time Together is a culmination of the Ladin-Siennes’ much lauded pop-ups—a sweet-and-savory succession that includes the initial Bow Market scoop shop, a breakfast bites stint in a Cambridge cafe, and a more Mediterranean-influenced residency at the Charles River Speedway. “We’re both Jewish, so we interpret [our menu] through that lens of Jewish diaspora throughout the whole Mediterranean region,” Nick said. “That’s resulted in a lot of really interesting cuisine.” At Third Time Together, that shows up in sauces like amba, an Iraqi-Jewish sweet-and-sour condiment made of pickled mangoes, and zhoug, a hot Yemeni-Jewish sauce made of peppers, cilantro, and other spices.
An egg sandwich, lemon bergamot bar, and feta-za’atar bread at Third Time Together. / Photo by Siena Griffin
Nick began cooking in restaurants around 18 and “fell in love” with Middle Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean cuisines at Oleana, the now Michelin-recommended Cambridge restaurant, before leaving kitchens for college and law school. He had met Sari while he was cooking at Oleana, and they moved to Los Angeles, where he practiced law; then, they returned to the Boston area just before the pandemic. On a 2024 vacation to Italy, Nick whipped up a multi-course meal at a friend’s request. Remembers Sari, “I saw him come alive in a way that he was not alive when he was a lawyer.” Nick recalls thinking, “ ‘Okay, maybe I should get back to the things that I enjoy.’ ”
Third Time Together’s mezze plate. / Photo by Siena Griffin
Third Time Ice Cream opened in a Bow Market stall in September 2024, a sublease to try out a one-man scoop shop. Nick had experimented with making fun ice cream flavors years ago, and with a native New Englander’s all-season love of ice cream, the off-season concept made sense. “When we were kids, it would be like, ‘You guys are sick? We should probably get ice cream.’ ‘Oh, you’re feeling better? We should probably get ice cream,’” he recalls fondly. A brunch pop-up series at Tilde, a cafe and wine bar in North Cambridge, followed, showing Nick could do savory too—and at the tail end of the Tilde pop-up, Third Time won the Best of Boston ice cream category. (“To get that award when we were not [currently] selling ice cream was pretty wild,” Sari says.)
The ice cream and savory-cafe concepts soon merged for a residency at the Charles River Speedway in Brighton, where the Ladin-Siennes rebranded Third Time Ice Cream as Third Time Together. (“Third Time” alludes to a Hebrew expression used when two friends run into each other unexpectedly more than once, and part of their “We have to stop meeting like this!” banter is the shorthand “third time, ice cream”—in other words, if we run into each other again soon, you owe me ice cream.) The couple found a more permanent home for the concept when they secured the Kendall Square venue in November 2025, as the owner of Gracie’s and Earnest was looking to turn over the space, says Nick. (The original Gracie’s Ice Cream location remains in operation in Somerville.)
Third Time Together’s “Lebanese Blonde” and Levantine dog. / Photo by Siena Griffin
The goal with Third Time Together isn’t only to have a consistent home for a menu that includes both a cone of “The Coltelli” (Broadsheet coffee custard with pockets of smoked salt) and a Persian-Jewish meatball sub (Gondi meatballs with shakshuka-style tomato sauce and kashkaval cheese), but a welcoming physical space. Potted plants, art by locals, and shelves of cookbooks—some from the Ladin-Siennes’ own home, some rotating selections from the library—make the dining room feel more like a living room. “The heart of Third Time Together is hospitality, making people feel like they’re being taken care of,” says Nick. “You feel that when you go to a really fancy fine-dining restaurant, but you don’t necessarily feel it when you go to a cafe.”
Third Time Together. / Photo by Siena Griffin
From the Speedway menu, Third Time Together’s returning staples include the “Lebanese Blonde”—cauliflower, toum (Lebanese garlic sauce), greens, and chili-crisp tahini in a Moroccan-style pita—and the “Levantine Dog,” a hot dog topped with sauerkraut and spiced with zhoug and amba. There are also variations of the egg sandwiches Nick made at Tilde, playing with souffle egg and house-made fenugreek sausage for a breakfast bite that’s “familiar, but also not the same one you’ve gotten a million times,” Nick says.
As for the ice cream, Nick’s roster of flavors have only grown more confident. “The Hojicha Card Never Declines” is a frozen custard infused with Kettl’s hōjicha and green, black, and red cardamom; “Foraging in the Forest” is an autumn olive berry ice cream with juniper sprigs and streaks of raspberry rose jam. Given the menu’s experimental nature, customers can also look forward to making fully-informed ice cream orders: Nick encourages everyone to “try as many things as they want,” part of “making people feel welcome and like they can take up some space here.” From pop-ups to permanence, the goal at Third Time remains the same, Sari says: “Repeat customers, consistency, warmth.”
Third Time Together owners Sari and Nick Ladin-Sienne. / Photo by Siena Griffin
399 Binney St., Kendall Square, Cambridge, thirdtimetogether.co.
