“From the moment I sat down at Nor’East, upstairs at the small counter overlooking the bar and dining room, I had to suppress the butterflies in my stomach. The rope wrapped endeavor was enough to take in … but then the playlist! Steely Dan, Rolling Stones, Zevon … My god, there had to be a mood ring driven pandora-led algorithm that had a read on on the pulse of the whole damn thing unfolding.
“I'd glimpsed the riches so was afraid to fill up on the tomatoes for fear of what I’d miss. I’d been crawling their instagram feed for weeks like a bitter ex in anticipation and could only imagine what I was in for.
“Out came the tomato-butter tossed & served Heirloom Tomato Salad just as I was jotting down my copious, later on decidedly [unintelligible] notes. The strips of basil cutting across the patches of salt & pepper like some mid-80s Burberry x Kwame, the Boy Genius, collab.
“The eighths, or - god, were they quarters?! – the cuts of tomato practically shoved the sourdough toast off the plate. Those delicious, mischievous, fruity bastards."
GONE AWOL
• • •
A well-intended and, heretofore, reliable contributor to our humble publication set out for a simple chef-convo & food sampling at Nor’East and returned with a takeout container with the remnants of chicken parmesan, a long story about an amazing heirloom salad, and their word to send their notes for this project along in short order.
When we got that email, there was no subject or body, just a couple of photos to cover off on the tomatoes, along with a land-mass sized chicken parmesan, which comes complete with an Appalachian-peak style grated parmesan mounds, and some other atmospherics. However, he did include 37-minutes of voice memos sent sporadically with all of his notes, some difficult to discern, shouted over the wind and waves of the Atlantic.
At the end of the transmission, a resignation was tendered.
“The whole thing’s run by pirates, they’re Vikings - his middle name’s Thor! It’s not tenable, it won’t scale. The center will not hold! [unintelligible, phone drops and tumbles]”
• • •
ALL THE WAY TO HELL’S GATE
… just hours earlier -
“Would my stomach ever forgive me?
“I betrayed my stomach and my diet once again. I finished the tomatoes - well, I left one small section, as I’d been taught by my well-bred friends in another episode of “how aren’t you housebroken by now?” airing on the sidewalk outside of a building in the West Village which doubles for a doctor’s office. Just then the intrusive thoughts were interrupted and the rubber met the road. Here is when I had my first conflicting view of the chef, Joe Vitale. It wasn’t 10 minutes earlier that he’d told me what he was sending out and asked if I’d like anything else - I told him I’d keep that in mind and he could steer if so. I couldn’t believe, moments later when the Chicken Parm was put down in front of me, that he had the audacity to intimate that there would possibly be any room left in my human body. And he asked with a straight face!
“The chicken parm looked like it was selected and cut to the size of the plate! It reached for the edges like it was going to slip into the middle and be lost forever. It wasn’t enough for the cheese to be melted to the edge of the breading - some poor soul had to strain their tennis elbow finely grating a wheel of parm on top of the breast cut. And we’re not talking about a pounded to paper-thin slice either. The mounds of parmesan peaks! Under the heat, the cheese melted into a double cheese. I was reminded of downer tween daughter Jesse’s purple depression cat, fat with ice cream.
“As I made my way through the exquisite chicken parm (repeatedly hoisting a Chico Duro - their jalapeno infused tequila cocktail to my grinning face), I looked around and noticed the striking design and build of Nor’East. It was suddenly all too remarkable - it sits right on Commercial St but somehow separate … adrift … between buildings and tenements on both sides. Like it snuck into its lot, it’s overgrowth concealing it from the outside and then it happened. I was in the middle of celebrating how much tomato sauce I’d eaten with zero acidic reaction (my god the ingredients are impeccable) when I had the SIXTH SENSE moment … he was dead the whole time … This is a pirate ship!
“[the phone jostles here and he moves closer to the microphone, tamping his voice down into a whisper] The bar is just about 100% solid wood, there’s detail in the details but … it’s not overly ornate. Hold on, there’s a reflection, I can … jesus what is that reflection? … behind the bar, the script spelling out Nor’East Beer Garden … it’s, I could be wrong but I think it’s … Nordic script! It’s Nordic. These are fuckin pirates, I’m in danger, I’m not safe … [the voice becomes distant, he speaks to someone] hi, I’m sorry to bother you, can I please have a to-go container, I have HAVE to leave, it’s urgent. But yes, please put the toast in there as well thaaaaanks.”
STONE COLD GETTIN COLDER
• • •
The views of a (former) writer do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. That said, we have a journalistic obligation to investigate drastic claims, such as the sort which our (former) writer has levied here. Accordingly, we did our research on Joe Vitale and we encourage you to judge his pirate tendencies for yourself.
Joe grew up in Wellfleet and cooked with his family (mother, father, 4 siblings) from a young age - he even thought about having his own restaurant as a youngin. Italian heritage on one side, German on the other. We contend this does not denote piratical leanings - though as more information comes to light, we can debate what’s circumstantial, what’s anecdotal, and what’s accessory.
Preliminary suspicions arose when he claimed his favorite Cape Cod restaurant was Stella Pizza in Orleans. A cursory web search and a couple phone calls later returned the truth: Stella Pizza has been closed for some years. Was Joe obfuscating? Orleans town records do show that there was in fact a Stella Pizza some years ago owned by a Joe Vitale. Interesting. Was he trying to throw us off the scent?
Why was he playing this game with us, heading us down this mirrored hallway of deceit? It turns out Joe Vitale has a father named Joe Vitale and it was allegedly the older Joe Vitale who owned Stella Pizza. But the younger Joe Vitale also worked there – the tax documents were inconclusive so let’s submit that ok, you got out of that one Joe Vitale -if that even is your real name.
Joe (the chef at Nor’East, not the Stella Pizza one) also worked breakfast and learned how to hustle on the line at the Wicked Oyster in his early days. He also put in time at the old Terra Luna (but what’s old becomes new again, so we’re told to be patient), and put in 4 years at Baie Bar Resto, where he met Maria, his essential first mate who keeps the crew in line - on the line - in Nor'East as well.
It all sounds reasonable so far, right? Well it did to us at first as well. Then we kept digging.
TERRORIZING SUCKAS ON THE SEVEN SEAS
Joe moves to NYC with his lady miss from high school (who is still his lady miss today) and finds his way to a degree in Chemical Engineering. Exactly - very suspicious. We’ll ignore claims that he moved to Washington DC as a CIA asset and choose not to fall down the rabbit hole that has him playing some Billy Costigan role in a ruse to abandon his “abandon” his engineer’s path and just sOmEhOw ends up back on the Cape when covid strikes.
And here finally, after scuttling across the shores of Outer Cape seas, we found the smoking gun in August of 2021.
•••
“[walking hurriedly, out of breath, unsettled] Why are none of these street lights on … [to passers by] oh hello … yes you too … oh thanks … ok they’re gone, they looked at me a little strange … my god I’m sweating … where is it … WHERE DID I PARK MY CAR?! Oh ok … who’s this now? … [talking to someone] hello, how’s your night? … uhmm … yes? Did I see you there? I had the chicken parm, it was excellent - do we know each other? … yes, I did like the Chico Duro … GASPS … did you see who did this to my tires? … THIS IS CRAZY, you didn’t see anyone stab my tire with this chef’s knife? … ahmm, I suppose I do, yes I should file some kind of report - you don’t mind driving me? Oh that’s very nice of you, thanks … hey wait, your interiors lights don’t work - I can’t see.”
I’LL BOARD YOUR SHIP AND TURN IT ON OUT
It’s documented and confirmed with zero conflicting accounts that Joe Vitale boarded the deck of the Nor’East casually, supposedly without any ulterior motives, on a warm night in August of 2021. After a couple of hours lying in wait at the bar or noshing fries at a table, he was able to put the staff there at ease enough for them to trust him and let it slip that the Nor’East was going to be in the market for a new chef in the near term. That was all Vitale needed.
Within days he’d sprung an Oktoberfest specific menu on the unsuspecting crew - thanks to his German grandmother and mom for that no doubt. Oh they were swept off their feet, I’m sure. This was a place making its way with fries and burgers and a hearty but bar-heavy foodmenu. Down from the mountaintops comes this charming fella who’s able to put a quick hit themed menu in front of them all. That’s all she wrote.
By the end of the season (they stayed open that year through October and now do through Halloween seasonally), Joe was welcomed into the collective and has been running the kitchen ever since. 2025 is his fourth full season and he’s migrated the menu over to what it is today, gradually - Joe, surely only by coincidence, knows well that a big ship may take some time to make a turn.
DELIVERING COLONEL SANDERS DOWN TO DAVEY JONES LOCKER
Over the last three seasons, he’s honed and fine tuned his approach (maximize dinner turns, ingredients are king, find efficiencies everywhere) and he, Vida, and Erik have found success enough to keep the ship afloat and, one hears, doing just fine in the loot department.
Did we find that Joe is a pirate? In some ways it’s impossible to deny: he’s found a way to live by the sea, he deals in priceless goods, he’s long haired and unshaven … maybe the only thing that delineates him from being Tom Hanks’s worst nightmare is the way in which he separates you from your booty. In all candor, the goddam food is so good, you can’t fork it over to him fast enough.
As editors of this article, we visited Nor’East and we had dinner. And here we are telling the tale. But we went in numbers and recommend that you do the same. Remember this isn’t a cruise ship, there aren’t endless seats, but if you plan smartly, you’ll find a booth, make a feast, and have some cocktails with friends. Try the meatballs or the scallops. If you need to be convinced about the chicken parm, you’re probably better off a vegetarian. In which case, the Heirloom Tomatoes are a thing of beauty.
A Last Word on the Crew
Nor’East Beer Garden is more than a bar — it’s a legacy. When siblings Vida Richter and Erik Thor Hamnquist lost their dad in 2009, they returned to Provincetown to be together, to build something lasting in his memory. Erik, a lifelong woodworker, built the bar and dining deck by hand, modeling the space after a Scandinavian Viking ship. Together with Vida, who’s been in the service industry since she was 10, keeps the vibe alive every season. From the salvaged Cape Codder windows to the rope-wrapped beams, Nor’East stands as a tribute to family, to Provincetown, and to a father who always believed in gathering people around good food and better
