This evening, the Clayton Board of Aldermen approved a conditional use permit filed by James Bommarito for 7,890 square feet on the first and second floors of the Centene Plaza C building, located on the southeast corner of Hanley and Carondelet Plaza in Clayton. The St. Louis Post Dispatch earlier reported news of the impending aldermanic hearing.
“We’re excited; they’re excited,” Bommarito said after the hearing.
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Tony’s has been a restaurant anchor in downtown St. Louis for decades, most recently in the Hertz building at 410 Market Street. Vince Bommarito, Sr., inarguably one of St. Louis’ greatest restaurateurs, was synonymous with the institution until his death last year. His son James now manages the restaurant, along with the adjacent Anthony’s Bar, which shares a kitchen with Tony’s.
Both restaurants are currently closed, but will reopen, although no timetable has been set. “Tony’s already has widely-spaced tables, and even some partitions,” Bommarito says. “Although we never called it that, we’ve been practicing social distancing for years.”
Reached today, Bommarito confirmed that both restaurants will shutter approximately one week prior to the move to Clayton, which will occur sometime after the first of the year. “Going to Tony’s during the holidays is a tradition for many of our guests,” he said. “There’s no reason not to let that all happen one more time.
“It’s bittersweet to leave downtown after so many years,” he added. “And I don’t think my dad would have ever left there. He was my best friend, and I didn’t ever want to be at odds with that, but since most of our core customers live much farther west, moving was the right thing to do for the legacy of Tony’s and the right thing to do for our family.”
Bommarito explained that unlike the present restaurant configuration, Tony’s would now occupy the ground-floor space and Anthony’s would be on the second floor. The front of the restaurant, which will face Carondelet Avenue on the south side of the building, will also feature a patio with a retractable canopy. Tony’s will be accessed from the Centene lobby; Anthony’s will be accessed by stairs or elevator, and it will have its own entrance off Hanley Road.
Bentel & Bentel, the New York-based architectural firm responsible for acclaimed NYC restaurant Le Bernardin and several of Danny Meyer’s restaurants, including Gramercy Tavern and The Modern, will design the space. Partner Carol Bentel is a native St. Louisan and received her undergraduate degree in architecture at Washington University. Her familiarity with the city is one of the reasons that the firm was chosen for the project.
“We’re only going to do this once,” Bommarito said, “so we wanted the new Tony’s to fit in but also be as dynamic as it can be. It has the potential to be one of the nicest restaurants in the entire country.”
And one of the cleanest. “Many of our customers know that we literally disassemble the cooking equipment every night to properly clean it and that we mop the kitchen floors with bleach every half hour,” Bommarito says. “None of that is going to change, and we’ll be implementing even more standards to keep us all safe.”
Despite the change in venue, Bommarito says to expect “the usual Tony’s—the same menu executed by the same staff and the same high service standards that our customers have come to expect for so many years.”
