All hearts and flowers: The Back Porch celebrating 50 years on Valentine’s Day
Before opening a celebrated destination dining location, Joe Pappalardo advised family and friends that providing “quality service, food and atmosphere” was integral to being successful.
“Dad would say that all the time,” his daughter, Patty, said with a robust chuckle. She heard her late father express that sentiment often, and fully endorses what he said. “People come here for all of the above.”
And more. They get a healthy serving of ambience and charm as well.
A half-century later, Joe’s mantra still resonates. The Back Porch Restaurant will celebrate its 50th anniversary at an incredibly appropriate date – on Friday, Valentine’s Day. That will be five decades to the day it launched on Feb. 14,1975, also Valentine’s Day.
Talk about a love story, a hearts and flowers tribute to a popular culinary locale a few hundred yards from the banks of the Monongahela River in Speers.
The Back Porch takes a back seat to few restaurants in the Mon Valley and Washington County. Operating in a building erected 219 years ago, this fine-dining spot is patronized by local residents as well as those residing an hour’s commute away.
It is a dinner destination, open for dine-in or takeout from 4 to 8 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. The Back Porch features a large, diverse menu of food, drink and desserts, makes seasonal changes to the menu and has vegetarian and vegan offerings. Entrees include numerous meat and seafood dishes.
This is a long-running family business, too. Patty, who now owns the restaurant, started there with her father in 1975 and, except for taking a year off in recent times, has been on board the entire way. Several other family members are employed there.
Management has added a couple of attractions for the Back Porch’s golden anniversary. “We’re going to take complimentary Polaroid pictures of all of our guests,” Patty said. ‘We’re also going to ask people to email a story about a memory or something funny that happened here, and we’ll select some who will win gift certificates.”
“We like to keep things fresh here,” she said of instituting changes to enhance the dining experience and atmosphere inside. “We will bring back classic menus from the past, starting after Valentine’s Day.”
The Back Porch operates in a three-story building along Speers Street, a short distance from Route 88. The interior is comfy and pleasant, featuring three dining rooms, a patio (seasonal), interior brick fireplaces, and its Side Door Speakeasy featuring happy hours.
There was a time, however, that this structure was in serious disrepair. It was built in 1806 as the home of Henry Speers Jr., a descendant of the town’s founder.
But by the time Joe Pappalardo encountered it more than a century-and-a-half later, the building was in shambles, all windows broken, the house long neglected. In the early 1970s, Pappalardo was an executive with Winky’s, a popular hamburger chain that no longer exists.
He stayed with Winky’s, but transferred from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, where he settled in the Westmoreland County hamlet of Youngwood. He wanted to start his own restaurant, and in his travels with the company, he came upon the forsaken old Speers House.
Joe purchased the house in 1972, with the intent of developing his dining location there. “People were saying, what’s with this crazy guy from Jersey?” Patty said.
He spent three years diligently revitalizing the building, then launched his painstaking endeavor, The Back Porch, on Valentine’s Day 50 years ago. A father of six, he not only devoted a lot of love to his family, but also to his vision before passing away in the spring of 2018.
Many of his patrons have reciprocated that love to the Pappalardo family.
The Back Porch does have a rich, interesting history that would be even richer and more interesting if a local legend could be corroborated. During the Civil War, the Speers home was believed to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad, “railroad” being a figurative term for a system that enabled slaves to escape to freedom in the north.
Rumors still persist that there was a tunnel starting in the basement that led to the Monongahela River.
Stories about this location abound. But this Valentine’s Day, like the one 50 years ago, The Back Porch will be all hearts and flowers.