This winsome addition to Savannah’s bar scene is the perfect setting for winter dining, plotting, and percolating.
Written by KIKI DY
Photography courtesy JOE & VERA’S
IT’S 5 P.M. ON A WEDNESDAY NIGHT. Joe & Vera’s is astir, and Tim Fitzgerald is impossible to wrangle. The ever-evasive owner of this sleek establishment on Broughton Street, he won’t share the intricacies of why his long-held dream, named after his grandparents, works so well. Answers to where he found the delightful antiques that fill out the restaurant, what makes the mouthfeel of the on-draft espresso martini so perfect, and why I was abandoned in the basement for 15 minutes are difficult to eek out. When questioned, Fitzgerald just smiles or spins crypticisms.
“Cantankerous,” he quips when asked to describe himself. However, those who know him would hardly agree. Acolytes of Savannah’s service industry praise Fitzgerald as affable, idiosyncratic, and particular. “He has a gentle ear,” a barfly shares.
A 20-year industry veteran, Fitzgerald has run the bartending gamut, working everywhere from rollicking dives to the three-Michelin-star institution Per Se in New York City.
“I worked at a French bistro for a couple of years early in my career; that was kind of waterboarding,” he says wryly. “A rather immersive experience.”
A visit to Joe & Vera’s is like sitting in Fitzgerald’s subconscious: lush, articulate, and a bit of a riddle. Curtis Mayweather’s “Move On Up” plays four times in the same hour but goes mostly unnoticed by guests as they catch up and court over cocktails. I sit in a stained-glass nook, savoring a Vinho Verde and petite oysters, served that night with “watermelon three ways and Aleppo.” Dishes arrive on antique china plates, served by the culinary team, a skilled assemblage including Brandon Preston (Two Tides) and Caleb McDonough (The Grey, Erica Davis Lowcountry).
The compact but elegant menu ebbs with the seasons but has constants. Expect crudo, steak frites, smoked kingfish dip, and oysters with inventive rotating toppings. Fitzgerald handpicked Preston, McDonough, and the rest of the staff, explaining, “It’s such a small room, we have to be a unit; if something is slightly off, the element is out of balance.”
The check arrives in an antique 1920s Lucky Strike cigarette tin, dappled by a patina of past mischief: It’s certainly been the centerpiece of a century of cigarettes and secrets shared.
Finally, Fitzgerald is ready to share some of his.
“I took elements from everywhere I’ve worked,” Fitzgerald says, and he means both physically and metaphysically. “That Deco sconce hanging in the hot tub [his shorthand for the elevated semi-private dining area] was in The Silver Lining cocktail bar when I bartended there.”
The color scheme — blues and hues of ochre and amber — was inspired by a hotel lobby in Cuba. Many furnishings came from Jere’s Antiques or Facebook Marketplace. The cabinetry is made up of antique hutches and china cabinets that Fitzgerald and the team modified to become wall-mounted storage.
As for the drinkery’s namesakes? “I don’t know very much about them, but I do know they would drink anything you gave them,” says Fitzgerald. His grandfather Joe was an elevator technician in the Empire State Building, while grandmother Vera worked behind the counter at a pharmacy across the street. They died when Fitzgerald’s father, one of a quintet brood of scrappy, hardworking Irish Catholic kids, was only 5 years old.
Fitzgerald’s bar program is classic and sophisticated. Like Joe and Vera, most patrons will happily drink anything he gives them. He understands that delight is in the details: ice, glassware, the hands wrapped around the copper cocktail shaker mixing your tipple.
“The ritual of drinking is one of the oldest and most beautiful we have in humanity,” he says. “I want this to be a space for everyone.”
As Savannah enters her hospitality gold rush, it feels like Joe & Vera’s will be lucky enough to strike — and stay. “Joe and Vera died early but accomplished much in what they left behind,” says Fitzgerald. “I’d like to think they live on here.”
