Joe Muer Seafood: A Quick Look
Here are some dishes and how much they cost at this upscale restaurant
Joe Muer Jr., a longtime Detroit restaurant owner known for the legendary Joe Muer Restaurant formerly located on Detroit’s east side, has died. He was 88.
Muer, one of the best-known names in the Detroit-area restaurant scene, died peacefully in his sleep on August 11, according to an online obituary.
Muer was best known for the eponymous seafood restaurant “Joe Muer”, which was founded by his grandfather Joseph F. Muer, who converted part of his cigar factory on Gratiot Avenue in Detroit into “Joe Muer’s Oyster Bar” in 1929.
The long-established restaurant on Gratiot Street was, according to the obituary, “known throughout North America, featured in Japan Air Lines, the Wall Street Journal, Ford Times, AAA Tour Guide, and Fortune Magazine, and, surprisingly, was listed in Vincent Price’s Gourmet Dining Association.”
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Joe Muer, often cited as one of Detroit’s finest restaurants, operated for decades east of downtown on Gratiot Street Vernor.
Muer closed the restaurant in May 1998. According to a Free Press report, an auction was held months later, with hundreds of people showing up to bid on restaurant memorabilia, including lobster bibs and Joe Muer matchbooks.
“The great thing about Joe was that he always told his employees that the success of the restaurant was because of his employees, not because he was there,” his wife, Jane Sielaff Muer, told the Free Press. “He was my very best friend and the best thing that ever happened to me.”
In a 1993 Free Press profile article, Muer was described as “an energetic man with a unique range of interests: he is a restaurant owner, community leader, philanthropist, friend, family man and sportsman.”
Muer was known for always wearing a bow tie.
“I guess I wear them because my father and grandfather wore them. It’s a tradition. I have 133 bow ties… I counted them the other day,” Muer, then 49, said in a 1986 interview with the Free Press.
Chef, restaurant owner and film producer Keith Famie said Muer was “by far one of Detroit’s greatest restaurant ambassadors and partly responsible for our rich culinary heritage here in the Motor City.”
“But Joe was much more than the dapper gentleman in a bow tie who made everyone who dined in his restaurant feel like they were sitting at his kitchen table at home. He was also a mentor and friend to everyone who was behind the kitchen door,” Famie wrote in an email to the Free Press.
Another passion of Muer’s, according to the 1986 Free Press profile, is sailing, and he competed in more than a dozen Mackinac Races.
In 2011, Joe Vicari, another well-known metro Detroit restaurateur and owner of the Joe Vicari Restaurant Group (formerly Andiamo Restaurant Group), purchased the name, logo, recipes and other rights to Joe Muer Seafood. Vicari, a friend of Muer’s, brought back the Joe Muer Seafood restaurant in 2011 and opened a branch in Detroit’s Renaissance Center.
“Joe Muer is an iconic brand and an iconic person,” Vicari said.
When Vicari entered into his partnership with Muer, part of the deal, he said, was that for the first five years, Muer would come to Joe Muer Seafood at the Renaissance Center on weekends to greet people and talk with them.
“The first two years, it was like a rock star came into the restaurant…people were infatuated with him and had so many fond memories of the original Joe Muer’s,” Vicari said. “It was a revelation to me that after so many years, people still appreciated the Joe Muer’s brand. People were just excited to see him.”
A Joe Muer Seafood opened in Bloomfield Hills in 2017, and the restaurant group recently expanded the brand beyond the state with a location in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2023.
Muer was recently featured in the trailer for the in-production documentary film “Detroit: The City of Chefs.” The documentary, produced by film producer and chef Keith Famie and set to be released later this year, takes a look at chefs, restaurant owners and operators from the Detroit metropolitan area who have influenced or played a major role in Detroit’s culinary scene.
The name Muer has been part of the culinary tradition of Detroit and the Detroit metropolitan area for decades
Muer’s brother, Chuck Muer, was also a well-known restaurateur who founded the CA Muer Restaurant Group, which was purchased by Landry’s, a multi-brand hospitality company, in the early 2000s. Chuck Muer was lost at sea in March 1993 along with his wife Betty and friends George and Lynn Drummey during a storm while sailing in the Bahamas.
According to his online obituary from Staffan-Mitchell Funeral Home in Chelsea, Joe Muer Jr. leaves behind his wife of 53 years, Jane Sielaff Muer, his three children, Joseph W. Muer III, Molly Ann (Dennis) Baran, Hans Thomas (Victoria) Muer, his grandchildren Hans Dennis (Melissa) Baran, Christopher Joseph Baran and Corbin Edward (Halle) Baran, his great-granddaughter Rollin Claire Baran and his great-grandson Beau Edward Baran.
A private celebration in Muer’s honor will be held at a later date, the obituary says.
