Harley's Home Cookin' was a soul-food restaurant in Rochester's 19th Ward that was run by a longtime minister, former meat cutter and business entrepreneur named Wilbert Harley.

The restaurant, at 569 Thurston Road, served up menu items like pork chops, ribs, collard greens and chitterlings in a down-home atmosphere that Harley described as like "your grandma's kitchen." The place opened in 1990 and was an immediate hit, as reported in a November 1990 Democrat and Chronicle story.

"Harley's … may be the next best thing to eating in a Southern kitchen," wrote reporter Stephanie A. Reid. As Harley told her, "I want to introduce basic soul food to other races and, so far, it's been working out real good."

The décor included hardwood floors, china cabinets lined with Mason jars, a 1940s-era Kelvinator refrigerator and walls covered with cooking utensils and knickknacks. An old tin ceiling had been painted white. Desserts were displayed atop an old red-and-white gas stove.

"On any given day, gospel or jazz music fills the air along with the aroma of freshly prepared food from the kitchen in back," Reid wrote. Harley peppered conversations with references to God and Scripture quotes, a nod to his ministry at the time with Faith Temple Apostolic Church.

The Thurston Road eatery was one of several that Harley owned over the years. He started as a meat cutter working at a Congress Avenue market, where he would barbecue pork and beef and sell it to customers. Harley then started selling Friday-night dinners and, in 1981, opened Wilbert's at the corner of West Main and Broad streets.

That restaurant later moved to Jefferson Avenue before closing in 1984. The following year, Harley started a catering business, cooking meals large enough to feed hundreds from a stove in his Fairport home. That led to the 1990 opening of Harley's Home Cookin'.

Harley's wife, Celestine, operated Celestine's Hair Doctor beauty salons around the same time. The couple had previously owned Pedita Mecel's Clothing Store in the old Michael Stern building on North Clinton Avenue.

Harley's Home Cookin' is perhaps the most fondly remembered of the ventures. The intimate feel of the place, the quality food and attention to detail set the place apart, as Judith Evans wrote in a July 1991 review in the Democrat and Chronicle.

"The restaurant's cozy, small interior is filled with the décor of an old Southern kitchen, but has traces of contemporary flare," Evans wrote. She noted, among other adornments, "ruffled, delicate blue curtains" hung around the windows and shelves lined with things like a hand-held eggbeater. At the end of the meal, which included ribs, string beans and macaroni and cheese, Evans noted that the waiter "brought us a bowl filled with hot, sudsy water for cleaning our hands."

Harley did most of the cooking himself and was said to kick everyone out of the kitchen while he was working. A deeply religious man, Harley told Reid in the 1990 story that he instantly fell in love with the Thurston Road restaurant site, saying it was "like God had prepared a place for me."

Along with his involvement with Faith Temple Apostolic, Harley also was pastor years later of God's Cornerstone Church in Rochester. A woman at Faith Temple said this month that Harley now was with Newborn Fellowship Church. He could not be reached for comment.

The restaurant closed in the fall of 1993, according to an October 1994 article in the Democrat and Chronicle. But Harley didn't permanently retire his chef's hat.

A 2006 news article reported the Harleys' newest culinary concoction, a place called "Featuring Harley's" on North Clinton Avenue near Norton Street. Celestine Harley commented in the City news story that her husband "didn't know how to cook 30 years ago, but he started practicing … and something just happened."

"Featuring Harley's" featured the same soul-food cuisine that made Harley famous, including ribs and cube steak, and Harley continuing to demonstrate his cooking prowess.

"Soul food makes the best it can from what most of us can afford on a daily basis: bone-in or tougher cuts of meat, and dried, canned or frozen vegetables," wrote the author, Adam Wilcox. "A good cook like Harley can spin pure gold from this flax."

That restaurant, like Harley's Home Cookin', is now closed, leaving only good memories in the minds and taste buds of its loyal customers.

Morrell is a Rochester-based freelance writer.

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