Comfort And Culture In The Heart Of Naples: Tony Ridgway And Sukie Honeycutt

Sukie Honeycutt: I am from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I lived there for 18 years, then I moved to Connecticut for 10 years and came to Naples at 29 years old.

HL: You own four restaurants in Naples. How did you get started, and what was your first location?

Tony Ridgway: My parents moved to Naples in 1962 to join my Aunt Rosemary Robinson, my mother’s sister, in business. Rosemary Robinson was a well-known interior designer. She was across the street on Third. You see, the white building with blue shutters, that was built for Rosemary. The Fleischmann family that owns Third Street asked Rosemary to bring her existing business to Naples and built that building specifically for her interior design business. My mother and aunt were in business in that location [until] 1994. Aunt Rosemary met a man named ‘Junkie’ (Julius was his real name) — he was like a junk man who loved to buy stuff, that’s where he got ‘Junkie’ from. He built the building for her. This is when I came to Naples. Before this, I went to St. James in Hagerstown, then I attended Kenyon College in Ohio. Junkie Fleischmann collected a lot of junk. The Fleischmann family (of Fleischmann Yeast), were developers, world travelers and really sophisticated people that took an interest in Third Street. They started acquiring and developing land here. They, to this day, still own a lot of Third Street.

I opened my first restaurant in 1971 at the age of 27, when I got out of the Air Force. It was called Wurst Place. It was originally owned by a couple from Milwaukee. I bought the business from them and revamped the menus, took a little bit of time to get it redesigned and reopened it [on] October 4, 1971. We still have the bratwurst, Reuben and [other food from Wurst Place] on the menu here. It was a great place to begin.

In 1972, I opened the Chef’s Garden, which was super unique in the fact that Naples had been a place of steak, steak and more steak. All the country clubs were the same way with their menus. All about steak. Chef’s Garden had a creative menu, which was what became popular for our guests. We then saw an interest in the decor! The original colors of the Chef’s Garden were pink and green — very Naples! I will never forget where I came up with the colors for Chef’s Garden; I was In Florence, Italy, with my aunt, looking over the city, [and] I noticed the color of the table cloths at the restaurant we were sitting at. They were a beautiful house and garden color, perfect for a Chef’s Garden.