In late December, Dan McGuire said goodbye to friends and longtime patrons of Whitneys of Harvard Square, and locked the doors for good.
Whitneys was one of the neighborhood’s oldest establishments, a mainstay on busy John F. Kennedy Street since 1953. McGuire was forced to close after losing an eviction battle with his landlord, billionaire Gerald Chan.
A spokesperson for Chan says McGuire owed some $44,000 in past due rent. But McGuire countered that he withheld rent following a dispute over upgrades to the building’s electricity system.He claims Chan wanted him out because his bar doesn’t fit Chan’s “profile.”
Chan owns about 13 properties in Harvard Square, making him second only to Harvard University when it comes to property ownership in the neighborhood, according to the Harvard Square Business Association. His holdings include 40 Bow St., which he restored and was honored in 2017 with a Cambridge Preservation Award . Chan’s properties also include the long-shuttered Harvard Square Theater, the empty Dickson Bros. hardware store and the restaurant once occupied by Upstairs on the Square, no longer open to the public.
Some community members worry the once-vibrant urban center filled with local shops is losing its character. The city has tried to step in to address the issues of vacant properties and intimidation tactics. Business owners and leaders say problems have accelerated with Chan’s real estate investments; his companies have purchased some $170 million in property since 2012, according to the Harvard Square Business Association.
McGuire said the neighborhood has turned into a “billionaire’s playground.”
“It’s almost like he wants this to be his square — and it is becoming his square,” he said.
Chan was not available to comment for this story. But Dan White, a manager for the real estate investment firm he owns, Mayhaw LLC, said changes in the square are simply a matter of dollars and cents.
“That is the nature of the business,’’ White said.“We want the square to be as vibrant as we can, and we do our best to make that happen.”
Plus, Bakey comes to Kendall Square, and Marseille closes in the South End
By Kara Baskin Globe Correspondent,Updated January 16, 2025, 10:40 a.m.
George Howell Coffee Café is now open at the new Lovestruck Books (44 Brattle St.) in Harvard Square. It’s a homecoming for Howell, who started The Coffee Connection in the Square 50 years ago. Sip coffee alongside breakfast sandwiches and lunchtime toasts. The café also has plans to become a wine bar by night.
Harvard University’s neighborhood in Cambridge, Harvard Square, is home to an excellent restaurant scene. Diverse options ranging from Japanese barbecue to a bakery specializing in Belgian liège waffles mean that residents, students, and staffers alike don’t need to travel outside of the area for great food. Here are 13 spots bound to check the box for any type of situation, from quick, wallet-friendly meals to high-end dinners perfect for when the parents visit.
Eater maps are curated by editors and aim to reflect a diversity of neighborhoods, cuisines, and prices. Learn more about our editorial process. If you buy something or book a reservation from an Eater link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics policy.
Season to Taste
Following a recent relocation to a larger space on Massachusetts Avenue, Season to Taste is back in action with chef and owner Robert Harris’ upscale take on local, farm-to-table dining. The restaurant boasts an elegant, intimate dining room and a seasonal menu featuring local fare like Nantucket Bay scallops and Island Creek oysters alongside globe-trotting dishes like miso-braised cabbage with Calabrian chilis and crispy arepas with Colombian beans and apple celeriac slaw.
In the infamous battle between Felipe’s Taqueria and El Jefe’s Taqueria to be named the best Mexican spot in Harvard Square, we are staking a claim for Felipe’s. While Felipe’s may not stay open as late as El Jefe’s, it does have something that its nemesis does not: a rooftop bar.
Looking for somewhere to take your parents (or, have your parents take you, and pay) for family weekend? Russell House Tavern has got you covered. Located in heart of Harvard Square, Russell House Tavern has a sprawling menu of pizzas, pastas, and a raw bar with oysters, clams, and chilled lobster tails.
This seafood-heavy spot serves scallops, salmon, calamari, and, you guessed it, oysters. The ample raw bar and New England-inspired menu pair with craft cocktails and a well curated beer and wine list.
This two-story tiki bar and dim sum restaurant is serving up some of the best drinks and small plates in Cambridge, not to mention an immersive, highly-decorated interior that changes with the seasons.
Located in Harvard’s Smith Campus Center, Sally’s Sandwiches and Blackbird Doughnuts is your one-stop shop for some of the best sandwiches and doughnuts in Cambridge. If you’re in the mood for a savory breakfast, go for the Gallows breakfast sandwich — complete with fried eggs, bacon, cheese, avocado, spicy aioli, and a hashbrown on an Italian baguette, this sandwich is the perfect morning or afternoon pick-me-up. Or if you’re hankering for something sweet, you can’t go wrong with one of Blackbird’s classic doughnuts like the Boston creme or salted toffee.
Updated on: January 12, 2025 / 1:43 PM EST / CBS Boston
CAMBRIDGE – As wildfires continue to cause destruction in California, people and businesses in Massachusetts are looking for ways to help victims. One restaurant in Cambridge is doing its part to support relief efforts by donating proceeds from part of their menu.
Donating to wildlife victims
Source Restaurants, located on Church Street in Harvard Square, is donating all the money from their Perfect Harmony Drink.
“We are going to be donating our proceeds from the Perfect Harmony to go out to the families and all of the people out in California to help get them back on their feet,” owner Brian Kavorkian said.
The restaurant is partnering with World Central Kitchen, which provides hot food and cold drinks to first responders on the frontlines of the fires.
Kavorkian says he’s happy to know their impact is now being felt and fed across the country.
“Terrifying and one of the worst things I’ve ever seen, and I lived in California, so seeing that makes me feel so sad for all the people that I know out there,” he said.
Source Restaurants prides itself on supporting nearby communities by using products that are within 100 miles of their restaurant, so they said they are more than happy to help people who will need to rebuild in other communities.
“It means a lot to me to give back there, especially to the communities, because you know the struggles that the people are going through, and it’s going to be so hard to get your life back on track,” he said.
Brian says Source Restaurants will be donating the proceeds from The Perfect Harmony Drink from now until the end of the month.
The 22nd Annual Boston Celtic Music Festival will take place from Jan. 16-19 across various venues in Cambridge and Somerville. The event celebrates the traditions of Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton, Quebecois and other Celtic cultures.
The grant recognizes an artist who embodies the spirit of community and musical collaboration. Rakish, the inaugural recipient, will be featured during the festival finale, with more artists to be announced, along with a tribute to O’Donovan.
“We wanted to do something that would celebrate his musical legacy,” said Lindsay O’Donovan, reflecting on her late husband’s influence on the Boston Celtic music scene on Boston Public Radio Friday.
One of the festival performers, fiddler Hanneke Cassel, credits Brian O’Donovan for fostering the spirit of live music.
“It’s really hard to even come up with a great description of everything he did for the scene,” said Cassel. “Boston is such a unique place … bringing together the Irish, Cape Breton and Scottish communities.”
The festival has expanded over the past two decades, reflecting the growing appreciation for Celtic traditions in Boston.
“We were doing things mostly in Harvard Square, but being able to expand it into bigger spaces in Davis Square has been a really great thing to bring more people in,” said Matt Smith, managing director at Club Passim. “This is the biggest BCMFest ever.”
“When you’re playing music with people, it kind of surpasses … even if people have different ideas and opinions about how things should be run, music brings that together,” said Cassel.
Septimus, a sculptural character within Tired Clichés, a solo installation by artist Isola Murray | PHOTOGRAPH BY OLIVIA FARRAR/HARVARD MAGAZINE
In the middle of Harvard Square, with pedestrians bustling by, there’s a fish sitting in a bathtub. He’s patient, watching everything unfold from behind a window. His name is Septimus, and he’s a sculptural character within Tired Clichés, a solo installation by Isola Murray, an artist and art educator originally from Western Massachusetts. The exhibition, curated by Yolanda He Yang, runs at 25/8 artspace located at 2 Linden Street, Cambridge through February 4.
25/8 artspace is itself an intervention in the everyday. A slim, hallway-sized gallery nestled in the heart of Harvard Square, it was opened in 2023 through a collaboration between building owner Intercontinental Management, Yang, and Denise Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association (HSBA). The tiny gallery serves as a physical reminder that creativity can thrive even when made narrow.
View of the gallery from the street | PHOTOGRAPH BY OLIVIA FARRAR/HARVARD MAGAZINE
The space was created almost serendipitously, the result of a Cambridge zoning code requiring a maximum street frontage of 25 linear feet (here, between Mass Ave and Linden Street)—which inadvertently created a “false wall” on the side of Santander Bank. Rather than let the area go to waste, the HSBA worked with Intercontinental Management to transform it into a refuge for art.
The name given to 25/8 reflects two sources of inspiration. First, in curator Yang’s view, it’s a reference to the amount of time museum staff spend in their jobs: somehow, they find and devote an extra hour to each day, and an extra day to each week. Second, it references the original “Gallery 24/7,” a former repurposed Bank of America ATM at Mount Auburn and Holyoke Streets, which was converted into a temporary all-day, all-night artists’ collaborative in 2022. That gallery featured local artists and exhibited work in a mix of styles. From those beginnings, 25/8 artspace emerged as a more permanent, if still snug, home for artistic exploration.
25/8 is also the gallery for the larger project “Behind VA Shadows” (VA stands for Visitor Assistants), a creative collaboration created by Yang after the pandemic. Noticing the level of burnout experienced by museum staff at the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA), Yang spearheaded an initiative to create art opportunities for museum workers. Murray and Yang originally met working together at the ICA, where they bonded over a shared love for whimsical and inventive art. 25/8 has become the dedicated spot to showcase the art of museum workers, like Murray, through this project.
“There’s a term, called an ‘alternative art space,’” explains Yang. “Meaning, out of institutional control or management—and we all know why we need places like this. Too often, management is more concerned with administrative processes, like paperwork, than artistic vision. So, one thing I keep very clear and firm about the curatorial vision of this space is that I want artists to have the opportunity to experiment.”
Bringing new installations into the petite space always requires a bit of physical and logistical finagling, and Murray’s Tired Clichés is no exception. According to Yang, all new exhibitions are set up by community volunteers, who help to create the view seen from the street. The space rotates art every 4-6 weeks, sponsored by the HSBA.
Florian is a stamp-collecting hound; Delia is a bossy songbird who “reads to Coriander at night” | PHOTOGRAPH BY OLIVIA FARRAR/HARVARD MAGAZINE
Inside this portal now, all nine of Murray’s sculptures from Tired Clichés gaze out. They are a whimsical tableau of papier-mâché and mixed-media creatures, set within household scenes. Each are imbued with distinct personalities and clothing. According to Murray, Septimus the fish is a gifted and deeply sensitive chef; Muriel is a “loud and good-natured” ewe; Monique the bee is a connoisseur of “the finer things,” and is accompanied by her partner, Laverne (also a bee); Coriander the owl is a “great listener”; Celeste is a gossip-prone but “formidable” horse; Delia is a bossy songbird who “reads to Coriander at night”; Algernon is a discerning goat; and Florian is a stamp-collecting hound.
“Murray and I are both big fans of Hayao Miyazaki,” Yang said. Miyazaki is the Japanese animater and artist who co-founded Studio Ghibli, the production company behind Spirited Away,My Neighbor Totoro, and Howl’s Moving Castle. “So, we’re very inspired by the fantastical world and storytelling—and imagining that objects or animals might magically begin communicating with us at night.”
The installation entices passersby to reflect | PHOTOGRAPHS BY OLIVIA FARRAR/HARVARD MAGAZINE
25/8, and its predecessor 24/7 Gallery, are also part of a larger story about bite-sized art in Harvard Square. Down the street, the Shadowbox at One Brattle Square—curated by artist Kyoko Ono—similarly houses small-scale exhibits from artists affiliated with Gateway Arts, a nonprofit studio for adult artists with disabilities. Last spring, Gateway displayed a show at 25/8 artspace curated by Yang, entitled “fanfare of clouds” (a title drawn from Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s “August Bank Holiday,” 1954). In Ono’s words, “These windows give opportunities for artists to connect with the public through their art. They can bring peaceful moments of joy and appreciation. They can brighten small alleys. They might [even] inspire passersby to have a go with their own creative projects. And these windows stay open all the time.” Like “Little Free Libraries,” which have also gained popularity across the country in recent years, these three miniature open art galleries expand the goals of literacy and art beyond the institutional spaces of the library or museum.
As life ebbs and flows outside 2 Linden Street, Tired Clichés invites a moment of pause. As good art does, the installation entices passersby to reflect—in this case through the simplicity of the silly. The effect is twofold. First: What? And then, inevitably: a smile—a welcome bit of warmth on the cold, winter streets of Cambridge.
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Boston Calling 2025 Lineup Features Luke Combs, Fall Out Boy, Dave Matthews Band
The lineup for Boston Calling 2025 is very diverse and spans the worlds of rock, pop, country, and hip-hop.
Taking place May 23-25 at the Harvard Athletic Complex, headliners for the festival include Luke Combs on May 23, Fall Out Boy on May 24, and Dave Matthews Band on May 25.
Some of the support acts for Combs on May 23 include Megan Moroney, Sheryl Crow, T-Pain, and TLC. Supporting acts for Fall Out Boy on May 24 include Avril Lavigne, Cage the Elephant, The Black Crowes, and All Time Low. Lastly, supporting acts booked before Dave Matthews Band on May 25 include Vampire Weekend, Sublime, Public Enemy, Remi Wolf, Goth Babe, and Tom Morello. (The full lineup is listed below.)
Like in previous years, local food vendors will be on hand to feed the festival masses. Boston Calling’s website states that over 30 local food vendors will be participating and “Serving up everything from New England lobster rolls to Southern BBQ.” A full list of food vendors can be found here.
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — A Hannukah themed pop-up bar in Boston is shining a light on the holiday that is very often overshadowed by Christmas.
Maccabee Bar’s award-winning bartender Naomi Levy created this pop-up back in 2018 after seeing numerous Christmas pop-up bars and feeling left out.
“Maybe none of us really get over the trauma of not getting to sit on Santa’s lap, you know?” Levy said. “I thought to myself, what if we just made Hannukah the whole thing and really made it be seen and feel like something special?”
The pop-up is located at the bar Noir in Harvard Square, with another location in New York.
The entire place was decorated blue and gold, with menorahs and dreidels placed all over.
Maccabee’s cocktail menu leaned into the Jewish holiday theme, with drinks such as Hey Judith, Hebrew Hammer, and Latke Sour.
Speaking of latkes, the bar serves those too, but not the typical potato kind – these have cheese in them.
“The original latke was cheese,” Naomi said. “In ancient, ancient times that’s what they had, they had a lot of dairy.”
By Sean Smith, BostonIrish Contributor December 29, 2024
Dervish will be the special guest artist at BCMFest (Boston Celtic Music Fest), which takes place Jan. 16-19. Photo by Collin Gillen
Cathy Jordan, the lead singer of traditional Irish band Dervish, doesn’t require a lot of convincing to visit Boston, so she’s more than happy that she and her bandmates will be in town this month for Boston Celtic Music Festival (BCMFest).
“Boston is such an extension of Ireland it’s like another county,” said Jordan in a recent interview. “There’s such a huge Irish diaspora in Boston and the Greater Boston area, and there has been so much great music played there down through the generations.
“The audiences are always fantastic, so when we see Boston on the tour schedule, we’re always delighted because we know for sure for sure it’s gonna be a great night!”
Dervish will be the special guest for the 22nd edition of BCMFest, which takes place Jan. 16-19 at venues in Harvard Square in Cambridge and Davis Square in Somerville.
A program of Cambridge non-profit Passim, BCMFest is the annual showcase for Greater Boston’s rich offerings of music, song, and dance from Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton, and other Celtic communities. BCMFest features traditional acts and others that draw on contemporary sounds and ideas; full-time, professional touring acts; and local session musicians, highlighting performers from across the generations.
Dervish will headline the BCMFest Nightcap finale concert on Jan. 18 in the Somerville Theater, a performance that will include collaborations with local musicians and dancers.
BCMFest 2025 also will feature Rakish – the fiddle-guitar duo of Maura Shawn Scanlin and Conor Hearn – as the inaugural Brian O’Donovan Legacy Artist, honoring the late Brian O’Donovan, a towering figure in the evolution of Boston’s Celtic music scene. Known for its seamless connection of Celtic and Americana-influenced styles, Rakish will serve as the festival’s resident artists, appearing in a variety of settings. In addition, Scanlin is the musical director for the Nightcap concert.
The festival line-up also includes: Hanneke Cassel; Matt & Shannon Heaton; Scottish Fish; Copley Street with Owen Marshall; Ed Pearlman, Jacqueline Schwab, and Laura Scott; Torrin Ryan & Amy Law; Casey Murray & Molly Tucker; Marty Frye, Sarah Collins, and David McKinley-Ward; the Adam Hendey Band; Elias Cardoso; the Rose Clancy Trio; Magpie; Isabel Oliart and Friends; the Clare Fraser Trio; Sarah Ann Hajjar & Alan Chiasson; the Coyne Family Band; the Simon Lace Trio; Fox River; Joe Keane; Mrs. Wilberforce; Ken Pearlman with Janine Randall; Helen Kuhar & Rose Jackson; Jen O’Shea; Riko Matsuoka; and Clara Rose & Raphaella Hero.
Tickets and all festival details, including updates, are available at passim.org/bcmfest.
This will be the second year of BCMFest’s new format, which includes a headline act for the Nightcap concert and additional venues for performances and sessions. BCMFest events take place in Harvard Square’s Club Passim, as well as The Burren, The Rockwell, Crystal Ballroom, and Somerville Theater, all in Davis Square.
“There was a lot of excitement about the events in The Burren, The Rockwell, and Crystal Ballroom last year,” says festival director Summer McCall. “Having these venues as part of our Saturday Dayfest program really seemed to bring a new energy to the festival, and quite a lot of people who hadn’t experienced BCMFest before, and the Nightcap concert in the Crystal Ballroom that featured [Quebec band] Le Vent du Nord was a perfect ending.
“We’re continuing to add some touches to the new format this year, in ways that affirm the special music community we have here in Boston, and we’re so happy to welcome Dervish – one of the most exciting and accomplished Irish bands of the past few decades – to be a part of BCMFest.”
Originally formed in 1989, Dervish has performed all over the world, represented Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest, served as cultural ambassadors to China (where they held an impromptu session on the Great Wall), and, in 2019, received a BBC Lifetime Achievement Award. Their most recent album, “The Great Irish Songbook,” featured classic Irish songs sung by special guests like Steve Earle, Andrea Corr, Vince Gill, Kate Rusby, Imelda May, and Rhiannon Gidden.
In addition to Jordan, who also plays bodhran and bones, Dervish’s members are Shane Mitchell (accordion), Liam Kelly (flute/whistle), Brian McDonagh (mandola/mandolin), Michael Holmes (bouzouki), and Tom Morrow (fiddle).
Dervish has built its compelling sound around the instrumental and song traditions of Sligo, Leitrim, and North Roscommon, which Jordan describes as “very high energy. It’s fast and furious, highly ornamented and very wild.” She pointed out that Sligo-born musicians like Paddy Killoran, James Morrison, and Michael Coleman were the first to make recordings of traditional Irish music after they had resettled in New York City in the 1920.
“And then the recordings of their music traveled back to Ireland and became very popular all over the country,” added Jordan.
But the band has proved quite comfortable in other kinds of musical settings: They’ve covered contemporary material, including “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, the 1971 hit single by Cher, and performed in large festivals featuring acts like Iron Maiden and Sting. Jordan doesn’t find this at all baffling.
“When you think about it, all types of music were influenced by the various folk music and traditions around the world, and these were very strong foundations on which to build other music,” she explained. “Traditional Irish music in and of itself is a very strong, powerful music to listen to; its roots go very deep, and people can relate to that.”
McCall, the festival director, said the launch of the Brian O’Donovan Legacy Artist – made possible through the Brian O’Donovan Legacy Fund, established by Passim and the O’Donovan family – adds a further dimension to BCMFest while honoring the work of Scanlin and Hearn, who as Rakish combine a solid grounding in Irish and American folk traditions with a shared interest in, and love for, chamber music and jazz.
A two-time US National Scottish Fiddle Champion, Scanlin wields the technical range of an accomplished classical violinist, and the deep sensitivity of a traditional musician. Hearn, a native to the Irish music communities of Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, has played for a number of traditional music acts and bands.
In addition to BCMFest, the duo have appeared at Front Row Boston and “A Christmas Celtic Sojourn,” and played across the country, as well as at the Celtic Colors festival in Nova Scotia. Last year, Rakish released its third album, “Now O Now.”
“Brian’s influence on us and the community was so deep and simultaneously so widespread that it’s kind of hard to describe succinctly,” said Hearn and Scanlin in a recent interview. “Of course, it’s the ultimate honor to be connected with him in this way this year. He always made us feel really loved and supported, so it feels special and kind of nostalgic for BCMFest to support us and believe in us in this specific way, the way he did. Playing music in Brian’s honor feels like the truest way for us to show our gratitude to him and keep his legacy alive.”
With more than a decade of BCMFest experiences under its belt, Rakish has found that the festival promotes fellowship along with traditional music and dance.
“It always feels like a place where you’ll discover something for the first time,” according to Scanlin and Hearn. “That also speaks to the collaborative nature of BCMFest and the way it often transcends some genre boundaries. Often we – everyone – will tend to stay in our little sub-niches and only go to our regular session or dance, etc. But the memories of the sessions, dances, and parties at BCMFest are fond because they were some of the first times we’ve seen everyone from these communities in the same place playing and communing with each other.”
Cambridge gets romance-focused bookstore with pending wine bar, cafe
“The concept is similar to Trident in Boston, but it will be unique in its own way,” a Cambridge license commission page indicates
By Boston Restaurant Talk • Published December 27, 2024 • Updated on December 27, 2024 at 2:18 pm
A new bookstore has come to Cambridge, and it will soon include a cafe and wine bar within its space.
According to a poster within the Friends of Boston’s Hidden Restaurants Facebook group page, Lovestruck Books is now open in Harvard Square, moving into a space on Brattle Street that has 5,000 square feet of space and which focuses on romance books. The poster included a link to a boston.com article that says the shop will become home to a George Howell coffee spot and wine bar by late January, with a Cambridge license commission page indicating that “The concept is similar to Trident in Boston, but it will be unique in its own way.”
The address for Lovestruck Books (and the upcoming cafe and wine bar) is 44 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138. The website for the bookstore is at lovestruckbooks.com.
