Talking With Tommy Tardie About The Flatiron Room's Expansion To Miami & Much More

Tommy Tardie: so busy expanding his Flatiron Room empire that he doesn’t have time to shave.

I’ve loved the Flatiron Room — the whisky bar/restaurant/live music venue in the NoMad area of Manhattan — since it opened way back in 2012, the halcyon days of the first Obama administration. When its sibling location, which was known for years as Fine & Rare and has since been renamed Flatiron Room Murray Hill. opened in 2017, it immediately became a regular haunt for me and my wife (and sometimes our daughter as well, who loves their fries). When we moved to the neighborhood and became Murray Hillbillies in 2018, it became our local. A pretty fancy local, but our local nonetheless.

Full disclosure: I’ve become friends with owner Tommy Tardie over the years, which is actually how I came to write about him for Forbes. When I see him, we inevitably start talking about his business and the hospitality business in general, and I’ve always found his unfiltered, off-the-record insights fascinating and informative. If he would go on the record with those observations, I thought, it could make a really interesting article. And there was a news angle as well — Tommy & Co. are opening a new Flatiron room in Miami this fall. So one afternoon not long ago I sat down with Tommy in the Flatiron Room Murray Hill and, over a couple of sparkling waters (it was too early in the afternoon to drink, even for trained professionals like ourselves), sat and shot the shit about the Miami location and much, much more. I edited out a lot of “um”s and “y’know”s and a few less interesting tidbits in the name of brevity and… well, you can read the results right -> HERE <-. Tommy’s an interesting guy, so it’s worth a read whether or not you’re familiar with the Flatiron Room.