Palm Too Restaurant New York City: The Chaotic History of an Icon You Can’t Visit Anymore

Walk down Second Avenue in Midtown today and you’ll see plenty of glass, steel, and high-end sushi spots. But for decades, a very specific kind of energy lived at 840 Second Avenue. It was loud. It was smoky. It was cramped. If you were looking for Palm Too restaurant New York City, you were looking for the rebellious younger brother of the original Palm across the street.

The "Too" wasn't just a pun. It was a necessity.

Back in the 1970s, the original Palm was so slammed with regulars—newspaper guys from the Daily News, United Nations diplomats, and local power brokers—that they literally couldn't fit anyone else in. So, they opened a second location right across the street in 1973. It was meant to be an overflow valve. Instead, it became a legend in its own right.

Honestly, the vibe was just different. While the original Palm felt like a hallowed hall of New York history, Palm Too felt like a party that might turn into a brawl if the wrong person got the last 4-pound lobster. It was a place where the waiters had been there for thirty years and would openly mock you if you asked for a menu. You didn't go there for a curated "dining experience." You went there to get hit with a wall of garlic, butter, and the kind of steak that ruins your appetite for a week.

Why Palm Too Was Never Just a "Second Location"

Most restaurant expansions feel like diluted versions of the original. Not this one. Palm Too had its own soul, largely defined by the caricatures on the walls.

The walls were the heart of the place. If you were someone—or if the owners just liked your face—your likeness was hand-painted onto the plaster. We aren't talking about professional, flattering portraits. These were messy, exaggerated, and often hilarious sketches of local characters, celebrities, and regular Joes who spent too much money on scotch and sirloin. It gave the room a crowded feeling even when it was empty. You were never eating alone; you were eating with the ghosts of 1980s Manhattan.

The Ganzi and Bozzi families, who founded the empire, understood something about New York that a lot of modern restaurateurs forget: people want to feel like they belong to a club. At Palm Too, if the bartender knew your name, you were king.

The menu was aggressively simple.

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You had the steak. You had the lobster. You had the "Monday Night Salad." You had the hash browns. That was basically it. They didn't need to innovate because they had perfected the high-heat broil that gave their USDA Prime beef a crust that felt like a tectonic event.

The Reality of the Closure: What Happened to Palm Too?

If you try to make a reservation at Palm Too today, you're going to be disappointed. The restaurant officially closed its doors in 2017.

It wasn't a failure of popularity. It was a business consolidation. The Palm Restaurant Group decided to fold the operations of Palm Too back into the original location across the street (Palm One). They renovated the flagship, updated the infrastructure, and decided that maintaining two massive steakhouses thirty feet apart didn't make sense in the modern economy.

But for the regulars? It felt like the end of an era.

There is a specific kind of New York grit that disappears when you "consolidate." You can't just move forty years of cigarette smoke and whispered backroom deals across the street and expect the vibe to stay the same. When the doors at 840 Second Avenue shut for the last time, a piece of Midtown’s rough-around-the-edges charm went with it.

The Caricature Crisis

One of the biggest questions when Palm Too closed was: what happens to the walls?

You can't exactly peel a fresco off a 100-year-old wall without it crumbling into dust. While some of the more famous caricatures were preserved or recreated, most of that history stayed with the building. It’s a recurring theme in New York City real estate. The physical space holds the memories until the lease is up, and then the wrecking ball or the new tenant wipes the slate clean.

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The Steakhouse Culture That Palm Too Perfected

To understand why people still talk about this place, you have to understand the "Old School Steakhouse" hierarchy. In the mid-20th century, these places weren't just restaurants; they were offices.

• The Power Lunch: This wasn't a salad and a green juice. It was a martini and a sliced steak.
• The Waiter Dynamic: Service wasn't about being "polite." It was about being efficient. The waiters at Palm Too were career professionals. They knew the menu better than you, and they weren't afraid to tell you that you were ordering your meat wrong.
• The Portions: Everything was oversized. The lobsters looked like they could defend themselves. The cheesecake slices were the size of bricks.

It was an unapologetic celebration of excess.

There’s a lot of talk today about "authentic" dining. Palm Too didn't have to try to be authentic. It just was. It was loud, it was expensive, and the floors were covered in sawdust for years before health codes and modernization caught up.

What Most People Get Wrong About the Palm Legacy

People often think of "The Palm" as a massive corporate chain. And yeah, today, it is owned by Landry’s, Inc., a huge hospitality conglomerate. But for the vast majority of Palm Too’s existence, it was a family-run dogfight.

The original founders, Pio Bozzi and John Ganzi, started with an Italian restaurant in 1926. They didn't even have a permit to be a steakhouse. Legend has it that a customer asked for a steak, John Ganzi ran down the street to a butcher, cooked it, and realized there was more money in beef than in pasta.

Palm Too carried that "run to the butcher" energy. It felt scrappy.

Even when the brand expanded to Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago, the Second Avenue spots remained the North Star. If a waiter could handle the dinner rush at Palm Too on a Friday night, they could handle anything in the world.

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How to Experience a Piece of Palm Too Today

Since the physical location at 840 Second Ave is no longer the "Too" we remember, how do you find that vibe?

You go to Palm One.

The original location still stands at 837 Second Avenue. Many of the staff members from the "Too" side migrated over there. You can still see the caricatures (though many are newer). You can still order the Gigi salad—named after Gigi Bozzi—which is a chaotic mix of shrimp, green beans, tomato, onion, and bacon.

Actionable Steps for the Modern Diner

If you want to recreate the experience or pay homage to the legacy of Palm Too, here is how you do it right:

1. Order the Off-Menu Classics: Don't just look at the printed sheet. Ask for the "Half and Half"—a massive plate of fried onions and cottage fries. It’s the quintessential side dish that defined the Second Avenue experience.
2. Go Big on the Lobster: The Palm made its name on "Jumbo" lobsters. We are talking 3 pounds and up. If you're going to do it, do it the way the regulars did in 1985.
3. Respect the Bar: Some of the best stories at Palm Too happened at the bar before a single bite of food was served. Sit at the bar at the flagship location, order a classic cocktail, and talk to the bartender. Chances are they have a story about the "Too" days.
4. Look Up: Spend time looking at the caricatures. They are a map of New York’s social hierarchy over the last fifty years.

The era of the sawdust-floor, "Too"-style steakhouse is fading. Property taxes are too high, and diners' tastes have shifted toward smaller plates and "grammable" interiors. But the ghost of Palm Too reminds us that sometimes, all you really need is a charred piece of beef, a stiff drink, and a wall full of ugly drawings of your friends.

The restaurant might be gone, but the blueprint it created for New York hospitality—brazen, loud, and incredibly high-quality—is still the gold standard for anyone who actually likes to eat.

To truly understand the footprint of this institution, visit the original Palm One during a midweek dinner rush. Watch the way the captains command the floor. It’s a choreographed dance that was perfected across the street at the "Too," and it’s the closest you’ll get to that specific brand of Manhattan magic.