Tony’s Restaurant history from the top: A winter’s day with Tony’s chicken sign out front on West Washington Street (M-46); Mike Zwingman started working for the Lagalo brothers soon after Tony’s opened. He went on to manage and own Tony’s in St. Louis. Photo was taken 1989-1990; Business soon boomed after Tony’s opened, prompting the first remodel of the restaurant. in 1986. Within a short time an addition would be added to the north. Advertisement from January 1986.

Sometime in the mid-1980s, Joe and Pauline Nako decided to leave the restaurant business. As a result, a drive-in that had been in town for almost 30 years, the Dandy, closed. Finding a buyer took some time, but the Nakos eventually sold out to the Lagalo Brothers from Saginaw, and what had been known as the Dandy became Tony’s Restaurant.

The Lagalo brothers, Phil and Doug, did much searching before they purchased the Dandy. Both men looked around mid-Michigan and wanted a drive-in restaurant. Still, available drive-ins had become scarcer over the years. When they bought the Dandy in St. Louis (in addition to four others the brothers owned in the Saginaw area), it enabled the Lagalos to continue a philosophy that father Butch Lagalo started after he returned home from World War II. This philosophy was to “Give the people what they pay for,” a theme Butch’s father invented while operating grocery stores in Italy. The Lagalos also developed an Italian chef logo with assistance from a Saginaw News artist, which the Lagalos displayed on a sign outside the restaurant where drivers could see it while passing by. In a short time, Tony’s Restaurant became known as the place of giant steak sandwiches, spaghetti dinners, and giant ice cream sundaes, all because of their size and quality. When asked about Tony’s big helpings, Doug Lagallo replied, “We serve large portions. One of our fries, we’re told, is enough for three or four people.”  

On May 8, 1985, 29 years after the Nakos opened the Dandy, the Lagalos opened Tony’s Restaurant in St. Louis. Once again, St. Louis had a drive-in restaurant. When Tony’s first opened, the drive-in tried to continue the old practice of having waitresses run to cars with trays. Still, it did not work out as the business inside was too busy. In fact, it was standing room only inside Tony’s for the first four months of business in 1985. The customers just started coming – and coming – and coming. Within a year, Tony’s was open seven days a week from 8:00 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays and until 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. The Lagalos ensured that the famous Dandy chicken remained out front, and they put the name “Dandy”  beneath Tony’s neon sign. Some changes continued when the Lagalos added more booths. They built a wall between the cooks and diners (there had never been one before, and customers could see everything the cooks were doing firsthand). Not long before, an addition had to go on the back of Tony’s in the summer of 1990 to help deal with the growing business. Despite the changes, the Lagalos managed to keep an old, black-and-white original photograph of the Dandy on the wall inside, which the Nakos must have taken when they first opened in the 1950s. For the Lagalo brothers, St. Louis was turning out to be good for business.

The story of  Tony’s Restaurant took another turn just after it started in 1985. Three days after opening, a former delivery man, Mike Zwingman, was hired, and he immediately learned how to run the grill. Zwingman first met the Lagalos while working as a ham salesman. Although he took the new job, Zwingman had to drive a distance from St. Charles to work. Over time, Mike became assistant manager, working there for about ten years until he bought Tony’s from the Lagalos. It was a big step, and Zwingman initially wondered if he made the right decision as he was concerned about the debt involved. However, numerous people encouraged him to operate Tony’s, and the customers and business kept growing.

Zwingman remodeled the relatively new north side of the restaurant, making it what some called “The Beatles Room,” a non-smoking area. It also contained almost all of Zwingman’s personal Beatles collection. The front of Tony’s became a smoking section and was known for its Three Stooges décor. Approximately eighty people could fit into Tony’s on a busy day or night. Customers quickly responded to ten-cent coffee and free refills. Far and away, the biggest draw was breakfast. Ice cream sales, Tony’s trademark,  did not make money but drew in first-time customers. If you were naïve enough to order or receive an ice cream sundae, then heaven help you. Waitresses told you that the next one was paid for if you managed to eat the entire mountain of ice cream. I never saw anyone in my family or friends eat sundae as a whole – but everyone walked away awed by Tony’s. Mike Zwingman also put in a coin machine in the entryway, which was the only one of its kind in the area, and it took in several hundred dollars each month.

Another source of success for Mike Zwingman’s running of Tony’s concerns how he treated his workers. Five of his waitresses worked for him for thirty years each. The ladies joked that they would retire simultaneously; they enjoyed their work that much. Zwingman kept good waitresses because he paid more per hour than anyone around him, and other restaurants envied the fact that they had more turnover than Tony’s.

Some memorable times would be when business boomed under Zwingman’s ownership. Whenever the St. Louis Church of God Campmeeting was in session in August, it meant all hands on deck. Staff members could not take time off during those ten days as church campers swarmed to Tony’s. In  May 1997, Gratiot County experienced hurricane-like winds during a severe spring storm that shut the county down for days. With power out almost everywhere, St. Louis offered Mike to use some of its generators if he would feed the city workers. Mike agreed, and within one week, Tony’s sold out of everything in stock as word got out that Tony’s had electricity and food and was open for business. 

Another memorable business period at Tony’s occurred during the COVID pandemic. When Mike Zwingman reopened for business in June and July 2000, he and his staff saw the busiest and most remarkable period that Tony’s ever had, one that Zwingman still appreciates from the St. Louis community to this day.

As is sometimes true of good stories, they can end in tragedy. On August 20, 2020, Tony’s met a tragic ending when a fire broke out at night in the grill area. The fire, which took place in the grill area during the night after everyone went home, left Mike  Zwingman without a business, his workers out of jobs, and St. Louis out of one of its landmarks. Many were shocked and saddened to go past Tony’s and see the chicken standing in front of a burned-out restaurant. Despite this setback, Zwingman considered rebuilding and reopening on March 8, 2021 – the Nakos anniversary of opening the Dandy – but it was not to be. The cost of a complete rebuild was too much. If he had been a younger owner, Zwingman thought he could try to reopen. However, after serious contemplation, Zwingman was forced to notify his workers that Tony’s was done for good. It was unbelievably hard to tell his workers and customers that Tony’s was a thing of the past, but Zwingman eventually demolished the lot, put it up for sale, and retired.

After decades of what started as a  1950s drive-in, which evolved into a sit-down restaurant, came to an end in St. Louis. Looking back, many people still remember the location in St. Louis at 518 West Washington for the giant chicken, king-size helpings of food, and good times.

Copyright 2023 James M. Goodspeed