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"Often imitated, never duplicated, where the elite meet to eat." ~Tommy Jacomo of The Palm Restaurant\n\nTommy Jacomo, The Palm Restaurant, Washington DC\n \nA Ockershausen:\tThis is Our Town with Andy Ockershausen. I'm delighted to have a man here that I've known since he came to Washington, and I remember in 1972, Tommy. Tommy Jacomo, as far as I'm concerned, is the mayor of the D.C. restaurant world, and certainly knows more famous people than any ten people I know. Tommy, welcome to Our Town.\nTommy Jacomo:\tPleasure, thanks for having me Andy.\nBeginnings\nA Ockershausen:\tIt's a long way from New York, New York.\nTommy Jacomo:\tIt's all downhill.\nA Ockershausen:\tYou grew up in the Queens, right?\nTommy Jacomo:\tCorrect.\nA Ockershausen:\tWent to school in New York City?\nTommy Jacomo:\tYeah, very little schooling, I was hustling most of the time.\nA Ockershausen:\tYour family was in, was your family in the restaurant business?\nTommy Jacomo:\tMy father was a bartender at Waldorf Astoria for 40 years. He started in the men's bar, in the Waldorf Astoria, those days, no ladies were allowed in the bar.\nA Ockershausen:\tMen's bar only? Is that right? Can't do that now, of course.\nTommy Jacomo:\tNo. Then he came ... [crosstalk 00:01:05]\nA Ockershausen:\tI think that bar on the Mayflower was a men's bar.\nTommy Jacomo:\tMaybe, then they turned it into the Bull and Bear. That's where he worked until the end of his career.\nA Ockershausen:\tYour father ran that restaurant all those years? Well that was a great, great place. The Waldorf was the place in New York, correct?\nTommy Jacomo:\tOne of the best hotels in the city, yeah. \nA Ockershausen:\tI love the Waldorf. We used to go up with Sonny and Margo Jurgensen to the Giants game, Janice and I did, and stayed at the Waldorf, but they were the good old days. Tommy, you worked in New York then, you got into the bar business in New York?\nTommy Jacomo:\tIt was 1993, I got a job in the New York Hilton hotel as a barback, that's where you just prepare for the bartenders. You cut the fruit, get ice.\nA Ockershausen:\tWas that a new hotel at the time?\nTommy Jacomo:\tBrand new, just opened up, 1963.\nA Ockershausen:\tWow.\nTommy Jacomo:\tYep.\nA Ockershausen:\tI remember the great, great, New York Hilton was a great hotel when it opened. It was one of the jewels in the Hilton crown, along with the Waldorf and so forth. Was anybody else in your family in the bar business? Your dad, of course.\nTommy Jacomo:\tNo, my brother's in the catering business.\nA Ockershausen:\tWhich brother?\nTommy Jacomo:\tRaymond.\nA Ockershausen:\tMy friend Raymond? He was in the catering business in the city?\nTommy Jacomo:\tYes.\nA Ockershausen:\tOr in Queens?\nTommy Jacomo:\tIn Queens, Flushing.\nA Ockershausen:\tVery successful, I would imagine. Raymond knew the business side of it, right?\nThe Palm Restaurant - Getting Started, Washington Intelligentsia and Competition (Then and Now)\nTommy Jacomo:\tYes. I came down to be his personality.\nA Ockershausen:\tThen this thing happened, because I lived through part of it with your people. A friend of mine came to me and said, we're putting a group of people together to entice a New York restaurant to open a Washington division. It was, what did he call him, Peter Palm Tree?\nTommy Jacomo:\tMark Sandground. They put the group together.\nA Ockershausen:\tMark Sandground, and what's I'm thinking, Dickerson, Wyatt Dickerson was in that group.\nTommy Jacomo:\tThat's correct, yes.\nA Ockershausen:\tThat's where I first got close to him. I knew his wife, because she had worked as Nancy Handsman, and then she became Nancy Dickerson. She had worked at WMAL at one time, and Wyatt asked me to get in a group, and I met all you guys, and met the Bozzis and the Ganzis?\nTommy Jacomo:\tCorrect.\nA Ockershausen:\tWhat was your connection with the Bozzis and the Ganzis?\nTommy Jacomo:\tMy brother Ray and Bruce Bozzi are joined at the hip, just been best friends since kids.