JH and I have a long and rocky relationship. My wife and I first moved to Cambridge in 1991, my wife fully and I partially (true to this day), and to the Harvard end of town in 1993. Around then we “discovered” JH and started taking out-of-towners there. It always had its limitations, but the occasional brew was quite good (at the time they made their own), the burgers acceptable, and the chicken pot pie surprisingly good. It was a decent, hopping place to take visiting extended family that at the time included several kids. But, don’t you know it, kids grow up and restaurants grown down, and as that happened we went less and less. Last summer we had occasion to entertain some of these “kids” again, or rather the grown-up versions of these kids, who now had young kids of their own and wanted to go back to JH. We hadn’t been in five years. We were shocked at how awful it was – the food, the drink, and (worst) the depressing emptiness of the space.
I’m not surprised they’re closing, but slightly saddened from nostalgia, and semi-amused that a place named as it is is closing the H^2 branch but keeping open the one in NYC.
