Coffee Connection legend George Howell comes home again (and manages to lightly roast Dunkin' Donuts)

Boston Globe

11-02-2025

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Why coffee?
I'm writing a book about that very question. I got started in coffee kind of sideways, really. I started drinking coffee seriously when I was in the San Francisco area in the '60s and '70s.
That was sort of a renaissance in California culture, really. All kinds of specialty food shops were opening up. It was a farmers' market kind of world, more than anything you'd see on the East Coast. Specialty coffee started in the Berkeley and San Francisco area in the late '60s, with the birth of Peet's Coffee.
I found that coffee was on the bitter side for me. I don't love dark roasts. I got a French press and started brewing coffee from a cafe that was selling lighter roasted coffee, and that became my way of life every morning.
What drew you to California? What a time to be there.
I had a small trust that was making life a little bit easier — not very big, but just enough. I was working in an art gallery, exhibiting the Huichol art that you can still see at our cafes in Boston and in Newtonville. In 1974, I moved East, thinking I'd resume my studies at Yale. I arrived in Boston, visiting a friend, and discovered that the coffee was dreadful, to put it mildly.
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What did it taste like?
Wooden pellets painted dark brown to look like beans. It was like drinking sawdust. I realized that there was real possibility in opening up a cafe much like we had already experienced in the San Francisco area, and also possibly exhibit the art that I was so interested in.
So did you return to Yale?
Nope. I stayed here. My wife came up with the name 'Coffee Connection,' based on the popularity of a movie back then called 'The French Connection.'
We opened up in Harvard Square, and we roasted coffee in Burlington. Twice a week, we'd roast and then drive the coffee into the Harvard Square cafe.
What distinguishes your coffee from others?
That was exactly the question I asked myself when we opened: How do we distinguish it, and how do we make it clear to people that we actually roast our coffee right in Burlington? That's where I came up with an innovation, [putting] the roast date on every bag. Every barrel of coffee had the roast date on it, and then we wrote the date on the bag itself. That made it clear to people that we were the ones roasting it, and I also made people very aware of freshness as being a key ingredient in the coffee. That was number one. There was not a place in the country, and perhaps not even in the world, that did this for decades to come.
We also made French press on the spot for people. That way, if I had 15 coffees available, you could taste any one of the coffees right away. It really excited people. Within three to four months of our opening in April 1975, we became a media darling.
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A latte from George Howell Coffee Cafe in Newtonville.
Dan Watkins
How so?
Oh god, what's his name? Chuck Kraemer. He was on the 6 o'clock news. He did 'a portrait of a coffee connoisseur,' which lasted from 10 to 15 minutes. It was an interview with me, first at the Coffee Connection in Harvard Square, and then at a Dunkin' Donuts on Boylston Street, as I recall.
Dunkin' Donuts! Aren't they the enemy?
I wondered the same thing when he interviewed me, and here I was drinking a cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee! He asked me: What did I think of the coffee? And I'm thinking to myself, 'Well, I'd better be nice.' I said, 'Pretty good.' And then the next shot that I see, when I'm watching the actual video, is me walking out the door and throwing the cup, with coffee spilling into the garbage can.
The media always has the last word. What was Harvard Square like back then?
It was fantastic. The Garage, where we were, had Baby Watson's selling cheesecake and all kinds of pastries. And it was the early days of Formaggio [Kitchen] in another corner. The Garage was full of other types of places; Newbury Comics, I think, was there from day one. You had lots of small shops everywhere.
And now you've come full circle at Lovestruck. What brought you back?
[Owner] Rachel Kanter approached us, and the idea of opening up a cafe within her bookstore really appealed to us. We worked with her to really create a spot that worked well with her concept: We will make it educational. We can actually treat people to various tastings at different times in coordination with the bookstore.
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Why do bookstores and coffee go together so well?
Well, what a history. Coffee becomes really important in Europe in the 18th century, the Age of Reason, wasn't it? It's very connected to literature, literacy, gatherings of literary groups and such. It has that history from day one. This is where Jean-Paul Sartre, the philosopher, would sit and write his books. [Cafes] have always been associated with intellectual pursuit is really the answer, I think.
Since you're now in a bookstore, this is only fitting: Favorite author?
In more recent times, probably Gabriel [García] Márquez.
In 2011, George Howell showed the Globe how to make iced coffee the right way.
Essdras M Suarez/Globe Staff
Are we oversaturated with too many coffee places?
You know, from a point of view of competitors, we always feel pressure, to be honest. It's a matter of trying to separate ourselves within the Godfrey, which is our key location in Boston. We have a tall table. We invite people to come in pretty much every day, certain hours, and taste coffees with us. We do tastings for them black. We even have times where we offer people to bring in their own coffees, and we'll brew that alongside ours, and taste them blind.
What's the verdict?
I wouldn't be doing it if we didn't win most times.
There's a new study that says people who drink coffee in the morning have something like a 31 percent reduced risk of cardiovascular problems.
I love that, but I stay as far away from health claims as I can, because that's not the business I'm in. I'm in the business of high-quality, flavor, taste, and complexities in coffee. Coffee drip, that's like wine. Coffee espresso, that's like a cognac or a whiskey. You take it in really small doses, and it's way more powerful.
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Where do you like to eat when you're not working?
At my age, I don't go into Boston that often. But closer to home is 80 Thoreau in Concord; that's a place I really like to go. And Giulia in Cambridge — [owner Michael Pagliarini], he actually appreciates coffee. Most restaurants simply cannot afford a barista. They get run of the mill coffee, and that's that.
You've been here a long time. Are there restaurants that you really miss?
I used to love going to L'Espalier, especially when they were off Newbury Street. And I used to go to [Jody Adams's] restaurant in the Charles Hotel, Rialto. But, as I say, most of the time I spend at home at this point.
What's your favorite food?
Oh, boy, just about everything. I really span the spectrum, everything from oysters to French food to Italian, you name it. It's more the exploration. I'm here in Mexico right now, and I just had breakfast with mole sauce and two fried eggs. Oh, my God. And, of course, plantains. Just delicious. I'm exploring the food.
Oh, and this is a major thing of mine: I really don't like tortillas that use wheat and such. It needs to be a corn tortilla, one. Two, the Mexican tortillas are very flat. If you go to Guatemala or El Salvador, they're thicker. They're handmade. There's texture and flavor that's mind-bogglingly good. I would love to serve them in one of our cafes sometime.
Let's talk about coffee faux pas. Shots of hazelnut. Foams. What annoys you?
Flavored coffee was big in the '80s. That was like 30 percent of many cafes' sales. We refused to do that. We never did that. There's a new type of flavored coffee happening now, where farms, especially larger ones, are doing all these crazy combinations. They're cooking the coffee, fermenting it in different ways. Now you have infused coffees that are starting to happen ... mixed with pineapple or some other fruit to add exotic flavors.
That's just awful to my mind and does no service for farmers who really try to make a high-quality beverage. Outside of that, the big mistake for consumers is they should not buy ground coffee. They really would improve their coffee a heck of a lot by getting a grinder. And I really wouldn't recommend a blade-type grinder that rolls around, but a genuine grinder. It will cost typically over 100 bucks, but it's a one-time purchase. In the long run, it's really worth it. Grind the coffee pretty much on the spot and brewing it.
Once you've opened the bag of coffee, which has a one-way valve and is sealed, you've opened it up to oxygen. Seal the bag and freeze it. This stops the oxidation process in its tracks, which is what stales coffee and makes it lose a lot of its nuance. The first sip, you may not notice a difference. But, if you really drink the coffee over 15 minutes, especially black over 15 minutes, as it's cooling, the nuance and the dimension of a coffee will have really diminished. It's like watching a tire slowly flatten.
Interview has been edited and condensed.
Kara Baskin can be reached at