Post #449667 by Mo-Eye on Sat, Apr 25, 2009 2:21 PM

Now back to The Black Pearl...

You'll notice in the small ad the restaurant is called Joe Mucciano's Black Pearl. I can't find any info on who he was, other than he seemed to stay in that area his whole life and passed away in the 1990s.

But to add a twist to the story, I found that he opened the S.S. Black Pearl in St. Petersburg in Dec. 1963, which was a restaurant on a boat. There's a small article about it's opening, but it doesn't say anything about having Polynesian food or decor. There is a photo of it in the paper, and it looks pretty plain:

I thought it was odd that he would open a new restaurant under basically the same name, and the article doesn't mention the Supper Club at all. Does that mean it was already closed?

I did find a 1964 food article that gave 2 of Muccinao's recipes from the S.S. Black Pearl, and one of those was a Samoan Island Salad Dressing, so it looks like he may have held on to a little bit of Polynesia. The article says that he brought this recipe back from Samoa when he went there to attend a wedding.

But that's about all I could find on the web, so far...

Anybody else?