Citizen Profile: Charlene Ferreira and Glenn Mayers

The Right Blend:
Charlene Ferreira and Glenn Mayers
of Glenn’s Restaurant and Cool Bar

By Kathleen Downey

“I met my husband in a nursing home,” Charlene Ferreira shares. A twinkle of mischief lights her dark eyes. Ferreira’s husband is Glenn Mayers, the iconic hat-wearing owner-chef of Glenn’s Restaurant and Cool Bar. “Glenn was working as the nursing home’s chef, and I was the administrator for a sister nursing home. The food service director responsible for each facility introduced us.” Ferreira gives up the full story. But sliding onto a bar stool at the restaurant bearing his name, her husband offers a different version. “My dentures were lost, and Charlene helped me find them,” Mayers deadpans before a sly smirk cracks his face, betraying his adaptation of how he met his future wife.

Ferreira rolls her eyes and laughs with genuine amusement and affection. It was Mayers’s sense of humor, Ferreira says, that she first fell in love with. “Glenn is crazy . . . he really is,” Ferreira emphasizes her declaration. “But he’s also a lot of fun; there’s never a dull moment with Glenn.”

Mayers shares that it was Ferreira’s stubborn nature that first attracted him. After digesting this comment, he says, “I could tell that Charlene was good-hearted. I liked her smile, her pretty eyes . . .” Then, unable to reel himself in, Mayers adds, “And she was cheap.” As in a cheap dinner date? “No!” Mayers clarifies. “She was an expensive dinner date; I mean she was cheap.” Ferreira, sitting two bar stools away, interjects, “Oh, you’re nice,” in a tone that suggests his comment is anything but nice. But her laughter gives her away, and it’s clear that no affront was intended nor taken by the playful (and contrived) comment.

The gentle teasing and banter between the couple is their loving repertoire, tenderly seasoned since their first meeting almost 30 years ago. For the past 26 years, they have infused their complementary personalities and a shared passion for imaginative cuisine into their Newburyport restaurant. “Glenn is the creative one,” says Ferreira, who describes herself as “more analytical.” “I can follow a recipe, but Glenn likes to go ‘off-the-cuff’ and ad-lib new dishes; he can tell you what something is going to taste like before he makes it. He thinks about food all the time.”

As if on cue, Mayers dislodges himself from his seat at the bar, and temporarily from the conversation, and walks toward the kitchen. “Where are you going?” Ferreira asks. “Gotta’ check my stuff, man . . . things are starting to boil,” he retorts. In fact, Mayers is simultaneously cooking three of his signature sauces. Ferreira divulges that the spices and other ingredients are “all in Glenn’s head.” She acknowledges the culinary mastery of her husband, who is completely self-taught.

Mayers’s professional culinary path began as a waiter for a posh private club in Boston. He soon found his way to the kitchens of elite Boston hotels where he worked as a cook. His nursing home gig was a deliberate career side-step. Mayers took the job for the daytime hours so that he could be home in the evenings to care for his ailing mother. His devotion to family, friends, and community is an inherent trait. Ferreira shares that when the wife of their Winthrop neighbor was hospitalized with a terminal illness, Mayers cooked meals several nights a week that he delivered to their neighbor. “He didn’t want the gentleman to worry about meals or rely on takeout,” says Ferreira.

It is this attentiveness and passion for fresh, quality food that Mayers and Ferreira brought with them to Newburyport when they opened Glenn’s Galley in one of the city’s North End marinas in 1986. “We were a seasonal restaurant back then, open from April through October,” Ferreira says. “It was a funky place, right there on the water, and a lot of fun.” She adds that customers had to “work” to find the restaurant, traversing through a pot-holed boatyard before arriving at the eccentric eatery. But customers did find it. “We were always packed,” says Ferreira. “It was ‘insane’—almost cult-like. We were busy the day we opened, and we were just as busy the day we closed.”

But Glenn’s Galley only moved up the street, to its current location at the edge of downtown, where it was reincarnated in the early 1990s as Glenn’s Restaurant and Cool Bar. “Our customers followed,” says Ferreira. In fact, with the foot traffic, Ferreira says that the restaurant’s legion of loyal customers has grown.

Glenn’s Sunday night blues review, hosted by local music legend Curtis Jerome Haynes, has been a popular draw. “Sundays have been so much fun,” says Ferreira.  She explains that when Glenn’s was a seasonal restaurant, she and her husband had the time to venture to area nightspots and hear great music.  They made a lot of musician friends. Not wanting to give up the music, Ferreira says with a smile, “We brought them [the musicians] here!” Step into Glenn’s on any jam-packed Sunday evening, and it’s obvious that customers are happy with the funky, cool, musical vibe. Of course, Mayers’s inimitable dishes are also a draw. “Everything is prepared fresh,” says Ferreira. “Glenn oversees each dish that leaves the kitchen.”

Mayers jokes that he’s been using his old nursing home recipes. “I’ve just updated them,” he laughs. But Glenn’s is an award-winning restaurant, and the food is the antithesis of the institutional food commonly associated with nursing homes. Mayers shares that he received a mild reprimand during his stint as nursing home chef, because the dishes he prepared tasted too good. “The food wasn’t exactly dietary,” he says, “but the residents loved it! It’s the facility’s owners who weren’t too happy.”

For her part, Ferreira makes the desserts, takes care of the books, and fills in wherever she’s needed. “I like bartending,” Ferreira says, for the opportunity it gives her to chat with customers, whom she says make the job a lot of fun. “We have a wonderful staff, too,” Ferreira states. “They are like family, and we like to keep them!”

Keeping Ferreira may have been at the back of Mayers’s mind when the couple married in 1996 while visiting Napa Valley. “We hadn’t really planned it,” Ferreira says. “We were just having a really wonderful vacation together and decided that it if we ever were to get married, Napa seemed to be a great place to do it.” She says the impromptu nuptials required two picture IDs, a $120 fee, and a Justice of the Peace. Mayers quips, “It was a shotgun wedding.” Ferreira feigns annoyance and rolls her eyes at her irascibly charming husband.

Before we finish our interview, I have to ask about Mayers’s penchant for hats.  He gave up wearing a standard chef’s hat long ago, he says, in favor of the funky, somber, silly, colorful, and wide selection of hats that he keeps at the restaurant. “Oh, I have about a hundred hats,” Mayers estimates. He says that he decides at the beginning of each shift which hat to wear according to his mood. “I’ll change my hat a few times during the course of an evening,” he reveals. Ummmm . . . like Lady GaGa? “He’s just like Lady GaGa!” Ferreira is quick to respond, clearly delighted to share this revelation. Now it’s Mayers’s turn to feign insult. “Oh, I don’t think so!” he answers, with mock testiness. Mayers tries to conceal the smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “I’m outta’ here,” he states. And with that, he’s off to check his simmering sauces.

 

Kathleen Downey is the Features Editor for Newburyport Today. If you are a townie or a citizen who would like to be profiled (or to suggest someone to profile)—or if you have a local story idea, please email: Kathleen@Newburyport-Today.com.