Lexington restaurant celebrating 50 years of pizza, breadsticks and Joe
An icon of Lexington’s restaurant scene is about to celebrate a major milestone and fans are invited to the party.
Joe Bologna is celebrating 50 years of running his Italian restaurant, known for hand-made breadsticks served on plates of garlic butter as well as made-from-scratch pizzas.
While the restaurant plans to celebrate with a raffle, specials and other events for several days, the actual anniversary is March 1, according to the owner.
“When you’re young and starting our first business -- I always loved working in food -- you don’t think you’re going to be here 50 years later,” Bologna said.
The first Joe Bologna’s restaurant
Bologna, 77, opened his restaurant first at the corner of Maxwell and Limestone in 1973. A native of Detroit, Joe and his wife, Anne, moved to Lexington after he served in the Air Force, where he learned to cook for thousands in Vietnam.
He always wanted to own his own place but wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to serve. He originally thought about opening a seafood and steak place. But one day his wife was making bread and she rolled it into a pizza crust.
“We had some neighbors over and they said there’s nothing like that in Lexington,” Bologna said.
So he set up shop at 103 W. Maxwell St., where for 16 1/2 years locals, college students and visiting celebrities would cram into the 70-seat restaurant for authentic Sicilian style pizza with thick crust.
“I thought that was a long time. But now I’ve been in here 33 years,” he said. In August of 1989, Joe Bologna’s moved across the street and down the block to a renovated historic synagogue and church at 120 W. Maxwell.
Architect Lynn Cravens renovated the building, which features signature stained glass windows and seating for 160, including an elevated area in the middle under the cathedral ceiling.
Challenges and staying power
Over the years, Joe Bologna’s has weathered lots of challenges, including a fire, recessions, inflation, the shift in businesses from downtown to the suburbs and the COVID pandemic.
“I actually started in a recession. I think I did $635 my first week. ... I figured I was going to starve to death,” he said. “But my wife worked and paid the bills while I got started. A couple of students said we’re going to tell our friends and you’ll be busy in no time.”
In those days, he worked open to close, six days a week. But it paid off. Business grew steadily until the 1992 recession.
Bologna, who’s been invited to speak to business classes at the University of Kentucky several times, is blunt about what it takes to stay in business for five decades: “When times are good, I’m working 40-50 hours a week. When they’re bad, I’m back to 60-70 hours. You do what you can to survive in those times. I probably came close to bankruptcy three or four times in 50 years.”
When the pandemic hit and restaurants were forced to all but close, Joe Bologna’s got down to about $25,000 in the bank, he said. But $850,000 in forgivable loans kept him afloat, he said, and he said they are back to sales very similar to business before the closures.
These days, he tries to take a couple of days a week off. But he still makes the soups and the cakes from scratch.
And his customers who started as students these days come back as retirees. “They’re all retired, I’m still working,” he said.
UK Wildcat coaches, players
Over the years, his restaurant has hosted all of the University of Kentucky men’s basketball coaches, as well as lots of players. Bologna inadvertently got in a bit of hot water for that in 2008 for giving players meals for free. He had cooked for the UK basketball training table for four years (He said UK player Rajon Rondo was the pickiest eater: “Sometimes I’d make him two chocolate shakes and that’s all he’d eat”) and catered events for UK and for coaches and didn’t realized that a line had been crossed. Although the restaurant was off-limited for a few years, players and coaches are welcome again.)
How breadsticks got on the menu
At one time, there were three locations of Joe Bologna’s and together they made more than 1,000 pizzas a night on busy weekends. The Maxwell location is the only one left and over the years, the menu has grown and now includes a wide range of Italian dishes.
These days, pizza is about half of what Joe Bologna’s sells, with other Italian dishes like alfredo dishes, lasagna and spaghetti splitting the rest.
But those breadsticks may be what the place is most famous for.
“Everybody loves good bread,” he said. “People hear about that first.”
The pizza dough and the breadsticks started with his wife’s recipe, adjusted for the restaurant with better flour. His brother Mike, who also worked at the restaurant, actually brought the idea to him, based on a Detroit festival that featured hand-rolled breadsticks dipped in garlic butter.
This may be the hardest time yet to be in the restaurant business, Bologna said. His secret is to keep things simple and consistent.
“I’m blessed with so many loyal customers and faithful people who have been coming all the years and continue coming,” he said.
