Joe’s Cafe Spaghetti and Pizza House

In “Home Town,” his book about Northampton, Tracy Kidder contrasted old Northampton, Hamp, with the trendier Noho. Joe’s Café certainly belongs to Hamp, but it keeps on being rediscovered by Noho. After all, where else can you find an Italian restaurant decorated with pictures of cacti and mestizos? Where else can you find good pizza, meatballs and spaghetti (gluten-free pasta on request), and a full bar in a setting that hasn’t seemed to have changed in 50 years?

JOE’S CAFE SPAGHETTI AND PIZZA HOUSE (33 Market St., Northampton, 584-3168) is an institution and, as with all institutions, you criticize it at your own risk. Fortunately, there’s not a lot to criticize. Joe’s is a pizza place and a red-sauce joint, opened in 1955 by Camilla and Joe Biondi. The Biondis were Italians from Argentina and when they hired local artist James Waldron to decorate the place they ended up with cacti and Mexican figures. A menu on the wall shows that many of their original dishes are still offered, although the prices have changed.

Red-sauce joints, no slur intended, served the pasta and tomato sauce favored by Southern Italians. In the 1950s, spaghetti and meatballs and a straw-covered bottle of Chianti was Italian food in America. Red sauce fell out of favor for a number of reasons, overcooked spaghetti and sour, acidic tomato sauces being two principal ones. Though we now call it pasta when we’re not ordering farro risottos or braised guanciale, there is something comforting in tucking into a good red sauce.

My wife and I dropped in at Joe’s early one Monday night and succeeded in grabbing the last open booth. I ordered veal Parmesan, a sentimental favorite. She ordered lasagna. We also got a linguica Little Joe (a 10-inch pizza), and when I noticed Ignari fils from Northampton’s Local Burgers at a nearby table eating the mussels, we ordered the Spanish mussels as well, as an appetizer. The mussels were fresh and clean, a large order steamed with white wine, sliced tomatoes, onions and hot pepper flakes. The dish came in the pan in which it was cooked with a spoon thoughtfully provided for dishing out the sauce.

Linguica is a flavorful Portuguese sausage and Joe’s gets its supply from Fall River, where co-owner Jack Sullivan was raised. They grind the sausage and sprinkle it on the pizza, flavoring the entire pie. The edge of our pizza wasn’t raised and I was afraid that the crust would be as crisp as a flatbread. It wasn’t: Instead, the crust was chewy, and firm enough to hold the toppings. It was as tasty as any pie I’ve had in this area. If linguica is not your topping of choice, you can choose from 28 other combinations. For years, we ate with friends in Joe’s bar, favoring a couple of pitchers and some pies, and I didn’t even know Joe’s served other food.

The veal Parmesan was a dead-on ringer for the Parmesans of my youth: three crisp breaded cutlets, topped with a good tomato sauce, covered with mozzarella and baked until the internal temperature could melt glass. The side of spaghetti was al dente and came with the same good tomato sauce.

The lasagna contained chunks of hamburger. A béchamel as well as a tomato sauce lined the layers, following the traditional recipe. It was not strongly spiced, allowing the milky flavor of the ricotta and the béchamel to dominate.

The side salads were topped with a slice of jicama and contained some shredded carrots, red cabbage and roasted peppers. Attila the Dietitian reported that the dishes contained neither too much oil nor too much salt.

For dessert, we had a cannoli and coffee. Our waitress was proud of the cannoli and rightly so. The shells and filling are purchased separately from the local pastry shop La Fiorentina, meaning that the cannolis are stuffed to order and arrive crisp. She was also proud of the coffee, which is a house blend. The beans are from Pierce Brothers and ground at the restaurant.

Local produce might seem out of place in a restaurant whose main ingredient, the San Marzano tomatoes used in the red sauce, necessarily has to be purchased in cans. But co-owner Gerry Rainville told me the restaurant uses locally grown vegetables as much as possible. They had just run out of the local spinach they’d been serving all summer. The Italian sausages are from Zonin’s in Springfield.

Rainville, a Chicopee native, graduated from the hotel, restaurant and travel administration program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and worked at the former Jolly Bull in Amherst under Bub Tiley. He met Fall River native Jack Sullivan when they both cooked at the Springfield Hilton. They teamed up to buy Joe’s in 1974. They say they change with the times, but carefully. “We don’t want to be trend-setters,” Rainville said. The pizza crust is thinner, the way people like it now. Eggplant, pesto, calamari, roasted red peppers and mussels have all been added over the last 20 years. Puttanesca is now offered with three levels of spice. These kinds of changes keep the place from turning into a museum, yet are a natural evolution.

Joe’s is open Monday through Thursday from 4 to 11 p.m., Friday from 4 to 11:30 p.m., Saturday from noon to 11 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 10 p.m. There is, of course, a full bar. Pizzas range from $9 to $11.75 for 12-inch pies, and from $12 to $16 for 14-inch pies. Entrees are $14.95 to $19.95 and pasta is $6.95 to $7.95.

Originally published Daily Hampshire Gazette, Nov 6, 2009.