San Francisco, 1927. New owners, none named Joe, buy a nine-stool ice cream parlor named Joe’s. They build business by adding spaghetti and hamburgers to the menu. Joe’s success begets New Joe’s, then Little Joe’s and Original Joe’s. Modern-day Original Joe’s on Taylor Street is in the same family as New Joe’s but not related to the original Joe’s and has nothing to do with Baby Joe’s. Now that we’ve got that straight, here’s the first question: Was it Joe’s, the original New Joe’s, or Original Joe’s that first served the New Joe Special? Second question: Was the New Joe Special a haywire Americanization of a northern Italian spinach dish, or did a Joe’s cook invent it as a stopgap measure when the kitchen ran out of everything but hamburger, spinach, and eggs? One credible tale of Joe’s genesis is set in San Francisco’s New Joe’s, late one night. A hungry musician orders a spinach omelet but pleads with the chef to do something to make it more substantial. The obliging chef adds hamburger meat left over from the dinner hour.
Whatever the precise evolution of this gnarled little branch of Bay Area cuisine, this is certain: Joe is an egg dish that involves pan-cooked ground beef with an Italian flair. Add tomato sauce and it becomes a sloppy joe. Add anchovies, olives, and capers, and it’s a Sicilian Joe. A Special Joe always has spinach—indeed, some New Joe Specials are little more than beef and spinach—but at Original Joe’s in San Jose (since 1956), the modern archetype of the dish also includes onions and eggs and, optionally, mushrooms. Original Joe’s menu alerts customers, “We are not associated with any other ‘Joe’s’ restaurants.”
Eggs, beef, and spinach make the Special Joe an especially bracing breakfast.