Café ArtScience breezed in to the Boston restaurant scene in October 2014 and has already made itself comfortable in Kendall Square. To bring the restaurant to life, French scientist and inventor David Edwards teamed up with a Boston industry trio, with each man playing to his strength: Patrick Campbell in the kitchen, Thomas Mastricola in front-of-house, and Todd Maul behind the bar. Grab a seat at the WikiBar and you’ll see Maul at work in an open concept bar that looks more like a lab. He took time out from his signature cocktail wizardry (torching citrus and spinning ice cubes in a centrifuge, you know, the usual) to talk about an Edwards invention called Le Whaf that’s added a breath-y touch to the Café ArtScience cocktail menu.

Le Whaf is a vaporizer, to put it simply—it uses surface tension and ultrasonic waves to turn liquids into cloud-like vapors. The result is heavier than air and still retains some liquid properties. For instance, it’s easily trapped in a glass (in this case, a bar glass) and can be inhaled through a straw. “A chef uses an amuse bouche to send out to the table to basically prepare your palate for dinner. Why can’t you do the same thing with drinks?” Maul mused. He put his mad cocktail scientist skills to work and uses Le Whaf to create alcohol clouds that act as a cocktail garnish, prepping the taste buds for what will follow with complementary or contrasting flavors.

The cocktail menu at Café ArtScience changes regularly but Le Whaf is a mainstay in the bar tool arsenal. Maul has created an elevated Tiki drink called the WhafTiki that changes flavor as you sip it thanks to its carefully crafted ice cubes (one a combination of almonds, amaretto and vodka and the other made of fruit juices and orange clement shrub.) What arrives in front of you is an enclosed vessel: a snifter sealed with a layer of hardened Angostura bitters and syrup. Inside the glass, the two ice cubes are visible through swirls of vaporized rum that’s been put through Le Whaf. To “drink,” you puncture the angostura chip with a finger and inhale your “garnish.” The rum vapor is more about flavor than alcohol content. It’s a teaser before the glass is filled with a rum blend that will evolve as it absorbs the flavor of the melting ice cubes and residual Angostura chip. Come spring, Maul has another menu-ready concoction called the Rustico that features ice cubes made with Urfa, lime juice and orange clement shrub with a Zapopan tequila cloud and a jalapeno and sugar chip, followed by Zapopan tequila and an Urfa-infused Fidencio Mezcal.

A Le Whaf beverage may sound technical but inhaling your tipple is actually a whole lot of fun. The restaurant’s passion for innovation is matched by their passion for hospitality and the bar is a place to get comfortable and try something new, or something old with a twist.  As Maul says, even with the centrifuge, blast-freezer and Le Whaf, “Ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s a neighborhood bar. It’s supposed to be, ‘Hey, man. Good to see you. What can I make for you?’” The answer is sure to be a breath of fresh air.