Moe Joe’s owner heading this year’s parade
The new hometown was pretty unfamiliar at first.
Jamie Littell, who moved to Plainfield with her family in 2006, grew up nearby. But although the Minooka native had grown pretty fond of New Orleans by that point, she hadn’t spent a great deal of time in Plainfield when she and her husband Stu opened Moe Joe’s, the Cajun-themed restaurant on Lockport Street, two decades ago. The eatery is at the heart of the route of the annual Plainfield Hometown Irish Parade, which will have Jamie as its grand marshal when the procession makes its way through the village on March 17.
“At first we didn’t really know anybody,” she said of the early days, when many in town were surprised to see the colorful establishment, with its vaguely mischievous decor, appear in the business core.
A few years later, when Jamie took the full helm at Moe Joe’s after she and Stu parted ways, she had to learn how to do things like placing orders with suppliers, and completing payroll — skills she hadn’t needed to know in her previous profession in the beauty industry.
“I got such a crazy outpouring of support,” she said. “You had a hairdresser running a restaurant. Everybody thought it was going to go down in flames.”
But instead of seeing an opportunity to edge out a rival business, she said, the other restaurant and bar owners rallied.
“Everyone was so good to me,” she said, wondering aloud how she’d have managed without the care that was shown to the young mother of four. “It was very kind, instead of competitive.”
She paid some of that kindness forward in 2020, when Joliet-based Guardian Angel Community Services saw its domestic violence shelters shut down by the state in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Moe Joe’s began providing dinner to the agency’s clients every Tuesday. That tradition continues, now helped by donations from Hufendick Farm Market, which sells its locally raised meat from a shop across the street from Moe Joe’s.
Jamie said her kitchen crew enjoys preparing and delivering the food every week.
“They take a lot of pride in it,” she said.
It’s not that the pandemic didn’t take a toll. It did, even for an eatery that by then had developed a loyal following.
“There just wasn’t enough (sales volume), no matter how many people waited in cars” for take-away orders, she said.
But still the restaurants in town, and the people who patronize them, had each other’s backs. When Jamie organized a gumbo contest among the town’s eateries in late 2022 to raise funds for the businesses that had been hit hard by the shutdown, the tickets sold out in days.
“Plainfield is like a little piece of New Orleans,” said Jamie, whose vintage house a few blocks from Moe Joe’s is painted in hues that echo Mardi Gras. “They’ll go out of their way to help.”
Her kids – Asa, 19; Lola, 17; Vallon, 10; and Alva, 7 – have settled into their hometown well, too. Their mom describes them as happy people.
“They’re sweet and kind-hearted and smart,” Jamie said, adding that they all make her laugh. “They are basically all comedians.”
And that town full of people she didn’t know when she got here? Many have become friends and supporters.
“I’m so glad I moved here,” she said. “At first we thought nobody liked us…but they got used to us.”