He was born on December 23, 1885 in San Marzano Oliveto, a village in Piedmont, Italy, the son of Giovanni Sardi, a college-educated estate overseer, and Anna Gilardino. Reared in a warm, though demanding, family atmosphere, he was a rebellious, adventurous boy who earned the nickname "Il Vagabondo" as well as the exasperation of his parents.
His parents sent him to work as a hand on a coastal schooner. After two years at sea he returned home, only to leave once more to accompany an uncle to England. Left to fend for himself in London, he drifted into his lifework in kitchens and dining rooms.
After numerous menial jobs, he became a valethouseboy in the home of the eminent surgeon George Newton Pitt. There he polished his English and manners and cultivated a country-gentleman style that allowed him to work as a waiter in the restaurants of plush London hotels such as the Savoy, St. James, and Carlton.
In 1905 he went back to Italy and was conscripted into the army. After serving two years, mostly in the officers' mess, he immigrated to the United States with his younger brother Eduardo, arriving in New York on Nov. 21, 1907.
Sardi quickly found a job as a waiter in one of New York's finest restaurants, Louis Sherry's. There, under the guidance of Charles Pierre, the captain, who later built the Hotel Pierre, he received further training in the art of food service. He refined his skills in numerous other establishments, including Bustanoby's, where Sigmund Romberg played the piano; the Cafe Martin, a gathering place for wealthy men and their mistresses; the Santa Lucia, in Coney Island, an area famed more for its amusement parks and gambling dens than fine food; and Reisenweber's, in Brighton Beach, a popular summer resort. He also worked at Murray's, a raffish Irish restaurant partially decorated by Stanford White, and the Montmartre, a lavish supper club located on the roof of the Winter Garden Theater.
After his marriage and the birth of his children, Sardi sometimes held three jobs at once, working the lunch hour at the Lord and Taylor restaurant, serving dinner at the Yale Club and after-theater supper at the Montmartre. When, in 1921, the year he became an American citizen, a friend offered to sell him on generous terms a small, forty-seat restaurant at 246 West Forty-fourth Street, in the heart of the theater district, Originally called the Little Restaurant, it was renamed Sardi's several months after it opened.
At first, the Sardis handled virtually every chore themselves. Jenny Sardi and one assistant did all the cooking and shopping, and Vincent Sardi and one waiter looked after the front. Sardi's soon began to attract a steady stream of actors, producers, and writers, partly because of its location but mainly because of the grace and warmth of the proprietors and their honest, hearty Italian fare. As its reputation spread, Sardi's became a mailing address for dozens of actors, a prop room for shows, and a virtual annex to the Lambs, the men's theatrical club nearby.
Sardi's insistence on maintaining a familylike setting meant that during the Prohibition years he refused to sell liquor or wine. Ever accommodating, however, he allowed customers to bring their own libations, provided they were discreet; he supplied the paper cups. By 1926, Sardi oversaw a staff of eighteen, six in the kitchen crew and twelve waiters, when he was forced to close to make way for the St. James Theater.
The new Sardi's opened on Mar. 5, 1927, but customers were slow in returning. Casting about for a way to stimulate business, Sardi remembered Zelli's restaurant in Paris, a popular theater hangout where caricatures of the rich and famous who congregated there plastered the walls. Convinced that the satirical portraits were the secret of Zelli's success, Sardi hired Alex Gard to draw celebrities who came into his establishment. Gard's striking caricatures, eventually covering the walls by the hundreds from floor to ceiling, soon became a Sardi's trademark. Whether Sardi's idea was responsible for it or not, by the 1930's his restaurant was more popular than ever.
With the end of Prohibition, Sardi reluctantly put in a bar - called the Little Bar - which attracted a steady clientele of theater people who turned it into an informal club. Sardi's continued to flourish during the 1940's. Nothing - World War II, the decline of Broadway, the migration of many of the faithful to Hollywood - could dim its luster.
In 1946 the restaurant became the setting for "Luncheon at Sardi's, " a daily radio program featuring interviews with well-known personalities. The program helped to further popularize the place, causing out-of-towners to flock to it in hopes of glimpsing celebrities.
A year later, Sardi retired, turning the restaurant over to his son, Vincent Sardi, Jr. , who had recently returned from wartime service in the marines. He died in Saranac Lake, N. Y.
He is famous as the owner of a restaurant in New York's theater district Sardi's, that became a city landmark, home to an extended family of theater people and a favorite celebrity-watching spot for others. One of the main featured of the restaurant - hundreds of caricatures of show-business celebrities that adorn its walls
(SIGNED (an inscribed to previous owner) by Sardi. First e...)
Always polite and attentive, ramrod straight and commanding in his dark London-cut suits and navy blue bow ties, with his aquiline nose and high forehead, he looked every inch the Noel Coward version of an English gentleman's gentleman.
He exhibited a love for the stage, attending the city's music halls and theaters at every opportunity.
At the Bartholdi Inn, he met Eugenia ("Jenny") Pallera, the chief housekeeper. They married on June 19, 1911, and had two children.
