Tony's Family Restaurant Turns 40

Tony Storti, his daughter says, remembers everyone who ever worked for him at

“One gentleman wrote on our Facebook page that he had worked for my dad 30 years ago,” Juliann Ewing, now a manager at Tony’s, told Patch. “And my dad goes, ‘Oh yeah, he worked for me back in 1975. He was a slacker.’”

This Sunday, Storti’s memory will get a serious test. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the restaurant he’s poured his adult life into, a group of his former employees and customers—slackers and otherwise—will gather at Tony’s to enjoy the food, and the company, that have made his place a staple of the borough since the Nixon administration.

“It’s open to anybody,” explained Ewing. “And we’ll be serving all the special sandwiches that have made us so popular. The Superburger, coleslaw, onion rings—all the foods lot of people can’t live without.”

She said the celebration will have a special character because it comes on the heels of what’s been a difficult year for her father. Storti, 67, and up to that point hale and hearty, suffered a heart attack last October.

“He’d never had any health issues before, and then we get a phone call one morning and my mom’s taking him to the hospital. It was scary,” his daughter said.

But despite requiring open heart surgery, and a subsequent rehab stint, he returned to the restaurant he loves that January. And his customers, as Ewing says they’ve always done, rallied around him.

“When he had the heart attack, people were finding out all over the place. We had a customer who found out in Barnes and Noble in Exton. I was like, are you kidding me?”

She said her dad, the man who remembers everybody, was touched.

“He just said he didn’t realize how many people knew who he was.”

Tony's 40th anniversary celebration will be held on Sunday, September 9 from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the restaurant's 623 Schuylkill Road location.