‘Desserterie’ To Replace Ma Soba

Harvard Square is soon to have its own “desserterie.”

That’s how business owners Kim Moore and Paul Conforti describe their sugar-focused restaurant Finale, which is set to open a new branch this fall in the former location of Ma Soba.

The new Dunster Street restaurant will provide Harvard Square diners with a menu consisting of upscale desserts, ranging in price from $7.95 for sorbet and ice cream to $30 for the chocolate plate for two.

“The likelihood is that people will have eaten already at another local restaurant,”Moore said, explaining the premise behind the restaurant. “It’s the sort of thing that happens in the North End. People want to extend their evening, or to take a walk before dessert.”

Moore said the restaurant will use the outdoor seeting area behind the Holyoke Center, allowing it to be both a formal and casual dining location.

“It’s going to have a warm, inviting glow, with red velvet banquettes and a small outdoor area,” said Moore. “People should feel comfortable in anything from blue jeans to a tux.”

While there are other places to go for dessert in the Square—such as several ice cream shops, as well as the cafe and chocolate shop Burdick’s on Brattle Street—Moore said that Finale will be unique.

Finale offers a formal dessert course, but does not have chocolates or single slices of cake like Burdick’s, said Moore.

“We’re friends with Larry Burdick. They do a great job, but they don’t do what we do,” Moore said.

The Cambridge restaurant—which is still in the permitting process, but will most likely be open by October—will be the second Finale location opened by Moore and Conforti. The first opened four years ago behind the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston.

The two came up with the idea for the restaurant while attending Harvard Business School from 1996-98.

They wrote a business plan under the Harvard Field and Study Program to research the profitability of a restaurant they then called Room For Desert, which they hoped would “do for dessert what Starbucks did for coffee.”

Moore says their hope is that Finale will make fancy desserts accesible to all, and turn them into more of a staple.

“You don’t have to come and spend $70 per person [for dinner] to get a nice dessert,” Moore said.

While the store caters to the decadent, Moore said its take out bakery will also fill a serious void in Harvard Square.

“There is no place to get a birthday cake in the Square,” she said.

But the lack of cakes is not the only thing that makes Harvard Square appealing to Moore and Conforti for their second Finale.

“Anybody who knows anything about real estate knows how great [Harvard] Square is,” Moore said.

—Staff writer Eugenia B. Schraa can be reached at schraa@fas.harvard.edu.