There used to be a door leading to an extra room that was used for either private parties or overflow on a busy night, but it was in the building next door that was torn down a year ago for the office tower that never was. It has a rec-room feel, its walls papered with Polaroids of favorite customers past, like family snapshots. The snug bar, tucked away at the far end of the kitchen, remains the heart of the restaurant. Just basic ingredients that somehow add up to more than the sum of their parts. Chimos has kept it on the menu, selling 20 to 30 servings each week. Unlike some other steakhouses in town, which have dropped the once ubiquitous though decidedly unglamorous calf’s liver with bacon and onions, Mr.
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Chimos says rib-eyes are his biggest sellers, followed by filet mignon and porterhouse. Old-timers start with the appetizer of pimentos and anchovies jarred and canned before moving on to steak. The open kitchen juts into the dining room, enough so that one woman I know stopped going there because she claimed her hair smelled like steak when she got home. Phillips took a lesson from his father: “If he didn’t know you, or he didn’t like the way you looked, he wouldn’t let you in,” he said.Įating at Frankie & Johnnie’s has never been a particularly decorous proposition. Though the doors with the peepholes are long gone, Mr. Johnnie stayed on, eventually giving the restaurant to his son, John Phillips, who owned it until 1985, when he sold it to Peter Chimos, one of his waiters, who has owned it since. (Before Disney), and given their druthers, still prefer strip queens to Lion Kings.Īs the story goes, one night, Frankie, a die-hard gambler, took the receipts and fled. Tradition means a lot for people who cherished Times Square B.D. The restaurant’s new lease is for three more years, he said, and the sighs of relief from those who work in the theater district, especially are audible.
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Wankel, co-chief executive officer of the Shubert Organization, which is Frankie & Johnnie’s landlord and also owns 17 Broadway theaters, told me: “Frankie & Johnnie’s will survive. The restaurant still stands, next to a yawning empty lot whose former occupants were not as lucky. The deal that would have demolished its four-story structure to make way for a block-long office tower on Eighth Avenue between 45th and 46th Streets fell through. Frankie & Johnnie’s, the steakhouse on West 45th Street that started in 1926 as a speakeasy during Prohibition and preserved that legacy as a hangout for hard-drinking meat eaters from show business and the garment district, did not close on Feb.