Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
It was Vince Bommarito Sr., the patriarch of St. Louis’ Italian restaurants, who nudged the now-legendary Tony’s into the national spotlight. When he died last year, his sons and daughter continued to operate the lauded restaurant with the same painstaking precision. It was business as usual until James Bommarito initiated a discussion to move the storied restaurant to the Centene campus in Clayton. After a hiatus at the downtown location (part mandatory, part voluntary), the 54-year-old restaurateur plans to open the doors to its much-anticipated descendant in January.
When did you first get involved in the family business? I graduated from Rice University in 1988 and immediately went to work for Anheuser-Busch, in Chicago, New York, and L.A. When my family took on the [food and beverage] service at what was Savvis Center and then the Trans World Dome, it was more than my dad and my brother [Vince, Jr.] could handle, so I came back home to help out. Vince worked the venues full-time, and I was at Tony’s full-time. I’ve been there ever since.
Do your siblings participate? My brother, Anthony, does the purchasing, receiving, and inventory. He will work in the new Anthony's Bar during the day. My sister, Lucy, was in the business but never worked for the company until we opened Tony’s AM downtown.
Did you ever consider another career path besides fine dining? In the 1990s, I developed my own pretzel recipe and opened a pretzel company at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. So far as I know, I’m the one who created the pretzel dog, which we sold there. My dad said, “Do your pretzel thing, or do Tony’s.” So I sold the pretzel business to Sam Orlando of Orlando Gardens, who still uses the recipe for catering jobs. If I would have kept that going, I think we could have done a bunch of them.
You ran the floor at Tony’s alongside your father. What did you learn from him? Dad took command of the table like no one I’d ever seen but in a soothing way. He had incredible patience with guests, no matter the request. He was the apex of the hospitality mentality. When he asked a couple what they’d like to eat one night, as a joke they shot back, “How about a couple of White Castle burgers?” My dad sent the valet down the street for a dozen Castles, arranged them on a silver dome, and served them personally. As a front-of-the-house operator, he was the best this country has ever seen. We had great food, sure, but his mannerisms and technique put us way ahead of any other restaurant. And he was tireless—it was not unusual for him to work 18 hour days and never bat an eye, never complain, or ever think twice about it.
Did you ever disagree with your father? I did when I was younger, but he didn’t listen to me, so it didn’t do any good. When I got older, I realized that he was right most of the time anyway, so I learned to just zip it and go with the flow.
Your dad trained staffers by giving them “50’s”, as in 50 question tests. Do you still do that? We do, but it’s 100 questions now, different all the time and given twice a year. And we still have an employee meeting every night, with a different waiter leading it. Everyone has a note pad and takes dated notes to refer back to, an idea that I refined. If you work at Tony’s for five years and look back at all those notes, you’ll probably see every service issue and bit of table etiquette that could come up.
Tony’s ordering system is somewhat unusual. When my dad first started in the business, he didn’t know much about the business. Verbal orders were coming into the kitchen, and mistakes were getting made. Now one person talks at a time and places the order using a microphone to the four line cooks, starting with station one, the grill station, and ending at station four. Pivoting off the longest cooking item, [the server] must return to the kitchen to ‘fire’ each remaining item on the ticket. A kitchen manager monitors the tickets, but the waiters time them. It’s an unusual system, but it works for us. That’s one reason it takes so long to train a waiter at Tony’s, and it’s so important, given the move, to retain the waiters we have.
The brigade system plays into that as well. Each station has three servers, a captain, who takes all the orders; one is responsible for ordering the food and the other for cocktails and desserts. You start as a food waiter, then move to cocktails and desserts, where you interact more with the table, then captain.
At Tony’s, three staffers are assigned per table. Yet no one ever asks the same question twice. How does that work? The captain takes the pulse of the party and relays the service needs to the rest of the team, who constantly communicate with each other. If seat No. 1 at table No. 2 doesn’t want any more wine, then it must be shared among the team. This back-and-forth goes on all night at every table, which is why you don’t hear us asking the same question twice.
What other service tips can you offer? When asked to select a bottle of wine, we point at its price to let the guest know we’re aware of the price. We never say the price unless asked. We pick a bottle at several price points, so as not to embarrass the person ordering. Then all they have to do is follow the point and say, "That one." They don’t even have to pronounce it.
Does the same captain work with the same team every night, and how do the tips get divided? Every night, we switch up the teams to keep people fresh, and each team receives its own tips. The captain gets a higher percentage; the other two split the remainder.
Do you have any parameters that you use when hiring staff? Good manners are something people come through the door with. I can teach the rest. One thing I do is walk every applicant back to the car. If the interior of the car is neat and clean, it’s a huge plus in my book.
Do you have any memorable stories from the early days at Tony’s? Way back when, my dad’s goal was to have the best restaurant in St. Louis, which he did, and after that came national and international recognition. When he was in New York, he met a guy who ground his own coffee at his restaurant daily. Now this was in the '60s, when nobody did that. He contacted his coffee supplier here and asked if they could do that for Tony’s, which they did. Every year or so, my dad would drop in on his vendors, unannounced, to say hello. At the coffee supplier, his salesperson wasn’t in, so my dad asked if he could see the warehouse, where they came upon this huge pallet of beans. The coffee guy waved at it and said, "That’s for some nut downtown who wants his coffee ground fresh every day." That was the last day my dad bought anything from them. He began doing business with Manhattan Coffee from that day on, for the next 40 years, until the day he died.
Do any memorable customer stories come to mind from your years at Tony’s? One night, a woman went downstairs to the ladies’ room, took off all her clothes, and streaked through the restaurant on both floors. This was in the ’70s, when streaking was all the rage. She went out the door and into a waiting limousine, changed into a new outfit, came back inside, and finished her meal. I won’t mention her name, but she’s still a customer.
Any celebrity stories? One night, Red Schoendienst was in celebrating his daughter’s birthday. The cake came out, and across the room a guy stood up, sang happy birthday to her, and sat back down. It was Robert Goulet. Fast-forward a few decades, just after the Cardinals won the 2006 World Series, Tony La Russa and his wife walk into a full dining room and every single person stood up and applauded. It continued for a while. It sent chills up my spine.
What’s a little-known story people might not know about the restaurant? We were always closed on Sunday, but when my sister was born, we started closing on Mondays because my dad wanted to spend a little more time with his kids. No one else was doing that—no restaurants in the country were closed on Monday, or so I was told—but after we started, then everyone started doing it. We like to brag that restaurants are closed on Monday because of my dad, but really, it was my sister who was responsible. We should all thank her.
Was Tony’s responsible for any industry innovations? Tony’s was the first restaurant in St. Louis to place wine glasses on the table and the first to put wine menus on the table. Tony’s was the first local place to use a table crumber. My dad was the first to introduce the baked potato to St. Louis, but he couldn’t sell them topped with sour cream and chives, the way he wanted to, so he served them with cream instead. There are lots of things we did that no one knows about.
What else made Tony’s so special? The consistency and professionalism of the staff. Between two pantry ladies and the four line cooks, at the end of their career, they had 240 years between them. Some of the waiters who came out of Tony’s went on to become the best Italian restaurant owners in the city: Giovanni [Gabriele], Dominic [Galati], Paul Manno, John Mineo, Kim Tucci, Charlie Gitto Jr. They were loyal to my dad, and he was loyal to them, which is something that stuck with me.
How so? When we closed Tony’s, on March 17, we did not reopen until we moved to Clayton, but I decided to pay our employees full-time pay during the hiatus. I’m sure my dad would have done the same. It was important to have them with us when we reopened. I don’t know of any other restaurant in the country that did that, but I learned long ago that loyalty goes both ways.
We’re talking about a significant amount of money here. Sure was. We had to get the corkball bat out and break the piggybank. But it’s worth it. Tony’s can’t run an ad and hire just anybody. It takes a year to get familiar with the place, the systems, and how to order and pick up the food.
In the past decade or so, rumors began circulating that Tony’s was moving—first to Busch’s Grove, then The Cheshire, then Centene. Was any of it true? All true, but the rent and tenant improvements at the first two were just too much. There [would have been] nothing left for the Bommaritos. With Centene, I approached them and asked if they’d entertain having Tony’s on their campus, and several meetings later we struck a deal that was amicable to everybody, since we both had a lot to offer the other guy.
Your brother Vince worked at Tony’s for decades, until May 2018, and then left. Did anything change after his departure? Obviously, Vince was a huge part of Tony’s—the amount of things that he did was vast—but you know, if you work any place for 35 years, you’re entitled to make a change. That’s only fair. When he left, I took over those responsibilities. Instead of working 10 hours a day, I now work a few more. We’ve had the same chef, Gerard Germain, for 40 years, so nothing changed there.
How does the new Tony’s compare in size to the old? We had 13,500 square feet. Now we have 8,500, which includes a small private dining room but not the patio. That’s still a lot of space, but it’s a better size for us now.
How does the new kitchen compare to the old? Since the menu’s pretty much the same, I designed it exactly the same way. Same footprint. Same equipment. Same equipment placement.
What does the new dining room look like? Same plates, same flatware, crystal glasses, sterling silver. There may be two or three of us in the city that still use it. We polish it twice a week. The service domes get polished every night; same with the copper pans in the kitchen.
Will the menu be the same as before? Yes, it’s a big menu that’s supplemented by seasonal appetizer and entrée specials. The big seller is linguine with lobster and shrimp, at 18 percent of the total entrées; then scampi and lobster tail with mustard sauce, at 15 [percent]; Lobster Albanello, at 11 [percent]; and beef filet, at 8 percent. Unfortunately for us, the top three are all made with lobster, which is a high food cost item.
How much time do you spend researching guests before they arrive? I remember most guests and their needs but we also have files. And I keep a lot of it in my phone. I go over each guest every night with my maître d’ and where they should be seated. You have to keep abreast of current events, so for example, you don’t seat opposing council near one another. You have to keep up with marriages, separations, and divorces. You have to put the people who want to be seen—we call them the peacocks—in the middle of the room. For these reasons, the maître d’ is a very important part of a restaurant like ours.
Is there a dress code at the new Tony’s? We hope that men will wear sportscoats in the main dining room, but it’s not mandatory. In the mezzanine bar, the dress code will still be business-casual, so we hope we don’t see flip-flops, cut-off shorts, and collarless shirts. We don’t want it to feel stuffy, nor do we want it to feel too casual.
When the pandemic hit, what were your initial thoughts, and what steps did you take with the staff? Like a lot of other people, I thought it would come and go in a few weeks. And here we are. We closed with the mandate, but then it didn’t make sense to reopen at 50 percent or less capacity, because our costs are so high and our margins are so low. Then, as people hunkered down, we felt it would be difficult to get them to come to a destination restaurant for dinner, so we remained closed.
You may be opening a new restaurant with less-than-capacity seating. How will that work? We knew that at the outset, so we planned for it, which also allowed us to incorporate every possible safety procedure. Truth be told, we’d practiced most of it for years at the old place anyway, except for taking guests' temperatures, which will be done with passive scanners.
Walk us through the new space. The main entrance is off Carondelet; the drop-off and valet stand is under a canopy. The main dining room, which seats 68, is on the main level, with a small private room. A mezzanine bar is upstairs with 40 seats and 16 barstools. The bar has its own entrance, too—a beautiful revolving door off Hanley Road. The patio seats 40, with a ceiling and sides that robotically open and close. Lunch is served in the bar only. Dinner is served in all areas, with the Tony’s menu available everywhere and a more casual menu offered in the café and bar.
What about the décor? Both our group and Centene were interested in a different architectural opinion, so we selected Bentel & Bentel. One of their projects was the redesign of Le Bernardin in New York, which I particularly liked. There’s a lot of wood, stone, textured glass, and artwork from America Martin. We can play different music in the different areas, which we couldn’t do before.
How will Tony’s differentiate itself from other higher-end Italian restaurants in Clayton? There are a lot of dining niches and demographics for all of them. When I asked my dad about competition in general, he told me, “Do what you do. Continue to do it better than everybody else. Don’t get excited about fads and trends and what the other places are doing. Everything else will take care of itself.” We feel that everyone wants to be pampered at some point.
