{"id":277528,"date":"2026-06-25T04:48:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T04:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/277528\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T04:48:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T04:48:17","slug":"after-100-years-its-the-last-night-for-an-independently-owned-sardis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/277528\/","title":{"rendered":"After 100 Years, It\u2019s the Last Night for an Independently Owned Sardi\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, Wednesday, June 24, is the last day the famous Broadway restaurant Sardi\u2019s<\/a> will run as an independently owned restaurant, the New York Times reported in March<\/a>. The Theater District institution has weathered the two-year pandemic closure, a bankruptcy, the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, and the Great Depression: Now, after nearly a century in business, ownership is passing from restaurateur Max Klimavicius to the Shubert Organization<\/a>, the Broadway group that has owned the building since Vincent Sardi Sr. and his wife, Eugenia, opened the restaurant in the 1920s. (The organization owns 17 Broadway theaters.)<\/p>\n

After tonight, Sardi\u2019s will close for several months of renovations: The restaurant will keep its name, its walls of celebrity caricatures, and much of its historic dining room. Klimavicius said the more than 1,000 caricatures \u2014 appraised at $6.9 million in 2020 \u2014 will be placed in temporary storage during construction and returned afterward. Robert E. Wankel, chairman and CEO of the Shubert Organization, also told the New York Times that a new restaurateur will take over operations, meaning that the menu could change.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, this wasn\u2019t about the money,\u201d Klimavicius, 71, told the publication about his decision to sell to the Shubert Organization. \u201cIt was about the continuity of this legacy, so important to me. This has been my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Klimavicius, it began in 1974, when he arrived in New York from Colombia and was hired to work at Sardi\u2019s as a kitchen assistant. Over the decades, he worked his way up from table captain to ma\u00eetre d\u2019 to management, and then became a partner with Vincent Sardi Jr. in 1991. He later bought the remaining shares of the business after Sardi Jr. died in 2007.<\/p>\n

\"Jake<\/a><\/p>\n

Jake LaMotta and Robert De Niro at Sardi\u2019s in 1981. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Sardi\u2019s has been a place to celebrate opening nights, to gossip, and, for tourists, in particular, a place that embodied the neighborhood with its location, lore, and caricatures. The idea for the Tony Awards was conceived there, and generations of theater people treated it as a second home.<\/p>\n

That loyalty could border on devotion. In 2010, the New York Times profiled William Herz<\/a> (who died in 2016), a then-93-year-old Broadway veteran who had been dining at Sardi\u2019s for 77 years. His run as a regular was longer than any employee had worked at the restaurant. Herz recalled a moment that cemented his attachment to the restaurant: after a play he produced closed after just one week in 1940, Vincent Sardi Sr. invited him to join him for dessert and coffee.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know your show is closing,\u201d Herz remembered Sardi telling him, according to the Times. \u201cI just want you to keep coming to Sardi\u2019s, and don\u2019t worry about the bill.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I burst into tears,\u201d Herz said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s why I\u2019ve been a customer of Sardi\u2019s for so long.\u201d<\/p>\n

That kind of loyalty helps explain why news of the sale and temporary closure was a shock to regulars and staff. The future for Sardi\u2019s 70-something employees is unclear, according to a staffperson who answered the phone today. Workers who want to return after the renovation will likely need to reapply for their jobs.<\/p>\n

Part of what made the timing feel right for Klimavicius was Sardi\u2019s recent resurgence. Ethan Hawke\u2019s Oscar-nominated 2025 film, Blue Moon<\/a>, was set over a single evening at Sardi\u2019s, bringing new attention to the restaurant.<\/p>\n

A renovated Sardi\u2019s is expected to reopen in November, around the same time the Shubert Theatre across the street raises the curtain on Galileo, starring Ra\u00fal Esparza.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday evening, friends and colleagues honored Klimavicius at the restaurant. Producer Brian Moreland praised him for preserving \u201cits rituals, its warmth, its sense of welcome, and its deep abiding relationship with the theatre community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tonight, there will be no party. The restaurant will close at 10 p.m., according to an employee. And Max Klimavicius will be in the house until the close of service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today, Wednesday, June 24, is the last day the famous Broadway restaurant Sardi\u2019s will run as an independently…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63,6461],"class_list":["post-277528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-restaurant-closings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}