CLOSTER, N.J.—For those who wanted to eschew the traditional Thanksgiving dinner at home back in 1959, there were many Northern Valley restaurants offering to do the cooking. In Closter, you could choose from the Black Forest Inn, Danny’s Steak House, the Red Coach, and the business featured on this page: Beppe’s Closter Manor.
The Closter Manor had been a fixture in the borough since the late 1920s. (In fact, according to a news report from the era of Prohibition, agents raided the Manor and arrested owner Henry Schmidt in 1931.)
The restaurant has changed hands many, many times over the years. Schmidt retired and sold it in 1944, and we know it was sold again in 1953 when it became Nolan’s Closter Manor under Eddie and Helen Nolan.
In 1955, Giuseppe (Joseph) “Beppe” Guglieri came on the scene with his wife Marie. Previous owners of New York restaurant Chez Marie, the Italian-born couple had gone into retirement in 1952, but soon grew restless. Wanting to keep occupied, they reentered the restaurant business in the more serene Northern Valley after Beppe spotted the Closter Manor while playing golf at White Beeches in Haworth.
Beppe’s Closter Manor opened in 1955, and while the weekends were busy, as Beppe told a reporter the following year, the weekdays afforded him time to work in the garden and play golf. It was “paradise” compared with the frenetic pace of New York City, he said.
Beppe’s served Italian cuisine in a dining room decorated in green and white, with flowers and a candle on each table. Beppe maintained that the dining experience should not be rushed—all dishes should be prepared to order, with dinner served at a leisurely pace and guests taking the time to savor the food and wine, relax and converse.
Born in Acqui Terme, northern Italy, in 1900, at 27 years old Beppe was working as a journalist for an Italian newspaper. After being sent to the U.S. as a correspondent, he decided to remain and began working at an Italian language publication in New York. While dining at a little Italian restaurant he met Marie, who was working as a waitress. They married in 1933 and opened a restaurant, Chez Marie, on 47th Street. Beppe had a working knowledge of the business; his widowed mother had operated a restaurant to support the family in Italy, and as he described it, he was actually “born in a kitchen.”
After seven years in Closter, the Guglieris retired from the restaurant business once again in 1962. Angelo Berna, a Demarest resident with 24 years of New York restaurant experience, took over and rebranded it Angelo’s Closter Manor. In the 1970s it became Villa Balantour, which featured the novelty of singing waiters. By 1979 it was the Early American-themed Grist Mill.
At the end of 1982 the restaurant took a turn toward Chinese cuisine with the Peking Duck House, which went on to operate there for nearly three decades—apparently the longest occupant in the site’s history as a restaurant.
In 2011 the building, completely renovated, reopened as Sear Steakhouse.