Tony's Restaurant: A Houston Culinary Landmark Since 1965
By: George Slaughter
Published: August 7, 2024
Updated: August 7, 2024
Tony’s Restaurant, located at 3755 Richmond Avenue in Houston, opened in 1965 in a location on Sage Road. Tony Vallone, a Houston restaurateur, opened the restaurant, which features Italian and seafood dishes, with seasonal offerings. The restaurant gained a reputation as upscale, with opulent décor, fine dining, and meticulous service. Vallone, who trained with Parisian chef Edmond Foulard, introduced recipes that combined marinaras and linguine with seafood, and later recalled, “No Italian restaurant in Houston was making marinaras or pasta with seafood…that was where I gained fame.”
When Houston architect and developer Gerald D. Hines was building The Galleria in 1970, he lobbied for Vallone to be a tenant and personally ensured that Vallone secure a loan to set up a restaurant near The Galleria. In 1972 Vallone moved Tony’s to a location on Post Oak Boulevard. Decades later he relocated the restaurant in 2005 to its present-day Richmond Avenue location, in the Greenway Plaza area of Houston.
Not only was Tony’s known for its food and service, but the restaurant was noted for the celebrities who dined there. Patrons included politicians, business moguls, foreign dignitaries, and Hollywood stars, including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Sophia Loren, Princess Grace of Monaco, Roger Moore, Luciano Pavarotti, and others. Eight U.S. presidents have dined in the restaurant. Vallone comped the meals for Houston Chronicle society columnist Maxine Mesinger, who regularly touted Tony’s as a place where the rich and famous enjoyed a good meal when in Houston. Hal Foster, a Houston society publicist, described the establishment as the “Cadillac” of restaurants.”
Stories abound about the famous customers, including Frank Sinatra, Muhammed Ali, and Tom Jones, who were refused entry into Tony’s in the 1970s because they violated Vallone’s strict dress code. Another popular story details a night in 1977 and in the wake of the Watergate scandal, when former vice president Spiro T. Agnew, Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski, and former Texas governor John Connally all dined in separate areas of the restaurant.
In 1992 Tony’s was named one of the top twenty-five restaurants in America. The establishment almost closed in 1994 due to higher rent costs, but Vallone and the landlord arrived at a resolution, and Tony’s stayed open. With the move to Greenway Plaza in 2005, the restaurant updated some of its menu and modernized its ambience. After Vallone died in 2020, his wife Donna took over the restaurant and vowed to continue his legacy.
Bibliography:
Donna and Tony Vallone, Tony’s Restaurant (https://www.tonyshouston.com/tony-vallone/), accessed July 20, 2024. Houston Chronicle, April 23, 1965; May 29, 1994; January 16, 2004; June 25, 2016; September 11, 13, 2020; May 13, 2023. Patricia Sharpe, “Tony Vallone, Houston’s Legendary Restaurateur, Died at 75,” Texas Monthly, September 10, 2020 (https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/tony-vallone-houston-restaurateur-dies-tonys/), accessed July 20, 2024.
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The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.
George Slaughter, “Tony's Restaurant,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 09, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/tonys-restaurant.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
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- August 7, 2024
- August 7, 2024
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