September 1997: Joe Pierce: 1918-1997

Joe Pierce died three months ago. On a Sunday in July, my wife, Jeanne (she had known Joe for as long as I had), and I drove to Elmira Heights, N.Y. to say goodbye to Joe. He was our friend for so many years, it seemed forever.

There was a memorial service Sunday at Grace Episcopal Church on Church Street in Elmira. The church was packed. Among a lot of other things the minister said about Joe, he recalled dining with his fiancée at Joe’s restaurant, Pierce’s 1894 Restaurant, and “how Joe came to the table and welcomed us and asked if there was anything he could do.” After the service, I asked the minister about Joe. He said that if there was one word you should use to describe Joe, it would be “generous.” He pointed to a stained glass window. “Years ago Joe donated that,” he said. The minister had more examples of his memories of Joe. Here are some of mine.

Joe at Wuthering. He shared with me everything 
he did to shape his restaurant into one of the best.  

Joe and I were with each other lots of times over the years: at Travel/Holiday magazine reunions, special events at the restaurant (the annual Wine Barrel Dinner was a favorite), or just for the hell of it to talk about the business of foodservice and his friends in the business and to learn what it takes to run a family restaurant in Elmira Heights, N.Y., not yet preyed upon by the invasion of restaurant chain predators that supposedly offer food and services as good as Joe’s (more about that momentarily); the frustrations and challenges; the hirings and firings; the wine lists and menus constantly under scrutiny, then adjusted to respect the whims and requests of a picky clientele; the rewards and disappointments. There was the wine room, in and of itself a fitting metaphor of the restaurant’s classiness.

Joe told me so much over the years that whenever I went out on stories or to speak somewhere to students or restaurateurs, in the back of my mind and between the lines of speeches and interviews, Joe Pierce lingered, his thoughts intertwined among the twists and turns my speeches or interviews took.

He shared with me everything that he and wife, Lee and son, Joe and daughter-in-law, Deb did to shape the restaurant into one of the best anywhere. In that sharing, I grew as a journalist writing about the restaurant business and I came to understand better what energy one has to ignite and burn to makes things work.

We fought friendly fights, fueled with fine wines or a scotch or two and the cigarettes we bummed from each other that killed him.

Years ago, I warned him about the 600-pound gorilla that is the midscale restaurant chain and how it would lumber into his community with scaled-down versions of its first-tier-city behemoths and snatch business away from Pierce’s 1894 because there were people all over (not just Elmira) who didn’t know the difference between good and bad food and were perfectly content to enjoy whatever wherever eating bad food. He wouldn’t hear of it.

Joe said, “They have no idea what they’re cooking and their customers have no idea what they’re eating.”

There is still the Wine Barrel Dinner at Pierce’s that he and Joe, Jr. conceived 17 years ago to honor, recognize, and promote the wines of the Finger Lakes. It always sold out. Joe invited me to the first.

The first of the annual wine dinners at Pierce’s. “You think any other restaurant in the country could have pulled this off?”

We sat together, two of 130, swirling and sniffing, tasting young and old wines—25 in all, all handpicked by son, Joe—that matched perfectly each course of the nine-course banquet; and then, ducking into the kitchen between courses for a smoke.

Joe looked at me and said, “You think any other restaurant in the country could have pulled this off? Huh? Tell me: any other joint? I can’t tell you how proud I am of my people.”

A scaled-down version of a first-tier-city behemoth opened up in a mall nearby. Joe said, “Lee and I went to the mall to check out this place called Ruby Tuesday. An employee told us to sit over there and wait. No, I’m sorry, that’s wrong. His tone was ‘sit there or else.’ I looked at Lee and said, ‘What the hell are we doing here?’ so we left.”

At Pierce’s 1894, there is a great bar with esoteric beers on draft and wines by the glass too numerous to count and cheese and crackers and if you have to wait for a table you don’t mind doing that at all.

Joe said, “I don’t know what to do about him. I try to tell him what to do and how to do it and I know Lee’s not going to like this, but I’ve got to fire him.” He was talking about his son-in-law.

The next day, late in the morning, Jeanne and I drive up the dirt road to Wuthering, the Pierce’s farm, where, in a clearing above the farm house, Joe is buried. The minister reads from Scripture and lines from poems that daughters Lida and Willa have asked him to read. An honor guard fires a 21-gun salute and the hills around the farm echo and echo with the sounds of their shots. There is “Taps,” a most mournful call. A bagpiper plays “Amazing Grace.” From a passed wicker basket, we take rose petals that we release and watch as they flutter to his grave. 

As Jeanne and I walk down the hillside from the house, a gentleman who has dined at Pierce’s so many times he has lost count, comes up to us and says, “I went to the restaurant last night after the service and sat at the bar and waited for Joe to show up.”

We drive down the dirt road away from Wuthering. I look in the rear view mirror and see the farm through the dust that swirls in the wake of the car.
 
Footnote: Three years before Joe died, I wrote about him, his family and their restaurant, one of the best places in the world to enjoy food and drink. It’s called, “The Pierces of Pierce’s.” It’s included in this collection

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