Reflecting on the former iconic Joe’s Restaurant

The dictionary defines iconic as something or someone “widely known and acknowledged, especially for distinctive excellence.”  

Joe’s Restaurant, located at 602 West Buffalo Street on Ithaca’s west end of town, most certainly fits that description. It has been an iconic place for families to gather for some of the best food anywhere.  Receptions, parties and other special events were held in the large dining area to the back of the building, with the smaller front dining room built up over the sidewalk, with large windows that allowed diners to watch the world go by as they ate. The bar area was packed with friends out for some fellowship and a bit of libation.  The wait staff quite often knew customers by first names and that would be nice as it made us feel we were in good hands, which we were.  

Let’s go back a bit in time and start at the beginning.  Mind you, most of this information was researched and (mostly) verified, but as we all know, sometimes our memories can be a bit different than how an actual event took place from years ago, plus many have passed who have the answers to some questions.  

The Joe’s Restaurant building began as a home for the Yengo family, which included Elvira Dano Yengo, John Joseph Yengo, and children Carl, Theresa, Lucy, Antoinette and Joseph.  

Eventually the building morphed into an Italian grocery store, which was edged out in the early 1930’s to become Joe’s Restaurant. At first there was the bar, the upper dining room and a little kitchen, but additions provided a bigger kitchen and a bigger dining area, and the family moved upstairs.  The Yengo family managed the restaurant for over three decades. 

An old Ithaca Journal ad read, “Opening Today, a finer and larger Joe’s Restaurant, open day and night, bar closes at 1pm.” It didn’t take long for the restaurant to become a very busy place for pals to meet at the bar and for families to gather for delicious American and Italian meals.  Henry Stark shared these thoughts when writing a review of Joe’s Restaurant in a 2019 Ithaca Times article, “In 1947, after World War II ended, troops returned to the United States, and many wanted to enjoy the pizzas that were so popular in Europe.  This prompted the owner of Joe’s to travel to New York City to buy, and bring back, the first pizza oven in Ithaca.”  

John Perko and his family lived next door, and he was one of the first dishwashers at Joe’s Restaurant.  Meeting up with him and chatting over breakfast was fascinating, as he had so many stories about the restaurant, not the least of which involved some bootlegging, “bathtub gin,” and high stakes card games in the neighborhood.  Mr. Perko has a wealth of information about almost everything having to do with Ithaca history, as he has been a proud Ithacan for, shall we say, many years! 

As the years passed by, management of the restaurant changed hands many times, including to John Vail, Larry Church and Mark Campagnolo.  

Eventually the building was closed up for about five years, until Marie and Howard Sutter bought it at a public auction. In 2005 sold the business to Heather and James (Jamie) Ciaschi.  It closed down once again for the last time in 2019, and has now been bought by the Visum Development Company, which is located in Ithaca at 226 Cecil Malone Drive, Suite 3.   

“Visum Development is an Ithaca-based real estate investment company, specializing in new construction and re-development of residential properties,” said Julie Bucher, Senior Development Manager at Visum. “After being nominated the fastest-growing company in upstate New York by Inc. 500 and the #24 fastest-growing real estate company in the United States, Visum is expanding its portfolio and has over 500 units under development.”   

She continued, “We have purchased the Joe’s Restaurant building site at 602 West Buffalo Street and will be building in its place, The Citizen, which, in Intends to be an homage to all of these citizens who remember Joe’s as being a place of joy and gathering. The Citizen will be a primarily residential mixed-use development that was designed to help bridge the existing gap for workforce housing in Ithaca, offering apartments for households making too little to afford the market rate options and too much to qualify for affordable housing. Visum believes The Citizen will improve the quality of life at the West End by re-developing this site into high-quality, modern workforce housing, and help accomplish the city’s vision for creating a more vibrant and economically prosperous West End neighborhood.”  

The Citizen will be five stories with 80 units on the top four floors with two commercial spaces and 26 ground-level covered parking spaces for tenant use. Outdoor amenities will include a picnic area at the north end, away from the busy intersection, street-front retail patios and landscaping. 

At the corner of West Buffalo Street and North Meadow Street, the ground floor was designed to increase the streetscape in an effort to improve the public realm for its tenants and for local citizens who will be walking by or enjoying the seating areas. 

The author, Jacqueline Winspear, said in her memoir, “As the names of streets became recognizable to my parents, stories would be told about people we didn’t know and a place we didn’t understand. When we finally reached our destination Dad would shake his head and say how it’s all changed around here, as they would look around them and seem bewildered, as if a thief had crept in while they weren’t looking and stole part of their life, something precious never to be seen again. Time is a place and every place has its time, for each one of us.”