What Becomes a Former Speakeasy Most?

Push through the crush of humanity in Times Square, past the digital billboards for The Lion King and the locals playing street chess, and head west on 46th Street, and you’ll arrive at Restaurant Row, a designation given to the block between Eighth and Ninth Avenues in 1973.

“We weren’t in this location then,” says Bill Chimos, ordering, for the table, fried calamari, shrimp scampi, a rib-eye steak, a porterhouse the size of a catcher’s mitt, and a bottle of cabernet. It’s a Thursday afternoon, and while Frankie & Johnnie’s Steakhouse isn’t open for lunch today, Chimos, a commercial construction litigator and partner at Zetlin & De Chiara, has a ready table. He owns the joint.

“It’s the oldest surviving speakeasy in the city,” he says. While the Prohibition-era need for a code word (“Frankie,” in this case) is gone, the traditional long wooden bar remains. It’s where people from all over the world talk with strangers, and regular customers reminisce amongst themselves.

“The building is owned by Local One, the stagehand union. We have a lot of members come in. We give ‘em a discount,” says Chimos, who understands the currency of staying true to who’s been true to you. “I’m first generation. My parents were Greek immigrants.” 

At age 16, Peter Chimos came to this country and worked his way up in the restaurant world, cleaning and cooking and working the floor, until the day in 1985 when the owner of Frankie & Johnnie’s asked Chimos if he wanted to take over.

The restaurants—there are currently three locations—became the Chimos family’s life and livelihood. Bill started helping out at age 12, going to the vegetable market with his dad, bussing tables, working weekends.

He loved it. At the same time, it’s back-breaking work, the margins are small and you’re constantly on-call. “My dad said, ‘I never want you going into the restaurant business,’” recalls Chimos. That was fine with him—he always wanted to be a lawyer—and after the NYU Stern School of Business, he went on to St. John’s University School of Law.

Commercial construction law was a natural fit for a New York City kid. “I was always intrigued by architecture,” he says. “And I love the industry. The people are great. The passion is specifically beautiful buildings—giving people what they want and trying to construct it in a way that everyone’s going to be happy.”

Making everyone happy and keeping them out of court—the architect with a vision, the contractor with a timetable, the owner and developer who want beauty at an affordable price—sometimes requires deft maneuverings. It’s a task eased by an ironic feature of big construction: It’s a small world.

“Large buildings—40, 50, 70 floors—there are only certain individuals, certain companies able to design and construct and afford to build it,” says Chimos. “In general, on the big cases, the companies know each other. We’re going to see each other again. Let’s work it out.”

As in the restaurant business, too. The Chimos family has hosted hundreds of celebrities and dignitaries whose photos line the walls, including Kathie Lee Gifford (favorite dish: the scampi), George H.W. Bush, and the repeat customer Chimos says “was the nicest person I ever served.”

“Tom Selleck,” he says. “He loved my dad.”

In December 2019, Chimos was finally brought into the restaurant biz when his father suffered an aortic aneurysm. “He was in his office at the restaurant, they had to drag him out and get him to the hospital; they could not save him,” he says. Chimos and his brother took over day-to-day operations and didn’t think twice about it. As for whether running a restaurant is harder than being a lawyer?

“Oh, a hundred times harder,” he says. 

During the COVID pandemic, Frankie & Johnnie’s was forced to close. “Nobody was around. You had no tourism,” Chimos says. It might have been the end of an era had their landlord, their purveyors, the whole extended restaurant family not ridden it out together. It was still painful seeing restaurant after restaurant, business after business around Frankie & Johnnie’s, shutter for good. 

Thankfully, Chimos’ day job kept him busy. “You had this slight lull at the very beginning, two weeks, three weeks,” Chimos remembers. “And then I was doing depositions almost every day by Zoom. I honestly think one benefit of the pandemic was Zoom.” That, and the Doris Day parking. “I was parking right outside our offices on Second Avenue,” he says. “It was great.”

Next year, Frankie & Johnnie’s celebrates its 100th anniversary. “My goal, and I think my brother’s goal, is continuing my dad’s legacy,” he says. “It’s not to just be 100 years, it’s to be 150 years. That’s something he would want.”