Shelly Fireman, a Showman Restaurateur for Showgoers, Dies at 93

Shelly Fireman, who was perhaps the most successful contemporary New York restaurateur at popularizing Italian cooking for broad American tastes — and broad American waistlines — died on Oct. 9 in Manhattan. He was 93.

The cause of his death, in a hospital, was a stroke, said Ben Grossman, chief executive of the Fireman Hospitality Group, Mr. Fireman’s company, which owns eight restaurants in New York and two outside Washington.

In an era of celebrity chefs, a Shelly Fireman restaurant was never about who was in the kitchen; it was about Mr. Fireman, an entrepreneur whose string of canteens in high-traffic Manhattan neighborhoods — among them Cafe Fiorello, across from Lincoln Center, and Bond 45, in the theater district — boast theatrical décor and flamboyantly styled food.

Cafe Fiorello, which opened on Broadway in 1974, popularized housemade ravioli, fried artichokes and artisan-style pizzas that New York magazine once named the best in the city. It is still in business.

The Bronx-born Mr. Fireman, who lived above the house at Cafe Fiorello, also had a home in Tuscany, in the town of Camaiore, where he spent summers for more than 30 years and sought ideas for his restaurants. (He always returned from Italy to New York in September to observe the Jewish holidays. “He emotionally felt he was Italian,” Mr. Grossman said.)

One Italian inspiration came from a visit to Capri: an antipasto bar situated outside the kitchen on the dining floor. The antipasto bar became a signature of Mr. Fireman’s.

The first antipasto bar — eggplant parmigiana, broccoli rabe and a cornucopia of other dishes — was installed at Trattoria dell’Arte, near Carnegie Hall, which opened in 1988. That restaurant is also known for the giant sculptures of noses and lips on its walls, created by the designer Milton Glaser.

A sculptor in his spare time, Mr. Fireman liked to plant his restaurants near cultural hubs. He did not see them as foodie destinations. He emphasized eye-popping portions in showy settings, intended to hook people on their way to or from a concert or a Broadway production.

When the 250-seat Bond 45 opened in 2005 on the former site of a clothing store, Frank Bruni, then a food critic for The New York Times, wrote, “When an Italian restaurant as big, blunt and built for the masses as Bond 45 comes along, it’s all too easy for food cognoscenti to cop an attitude, sneer a little and head instead for cozier, frumpier gems in neighborhoods less trafficked by tourists than the area around Times Square is.”

“But Bond 45,” Mr. Bruni continued, “has a kind of emphatic charm — an ebullience — that more self-conscious places don’t.”

Another Fireman property, the Redeye Grill on West 57th Street, which opened in 1996 and is still going, features a pair of six-foot-tall revolving bronze shrimp. A signature dish, dancing shrimp, consists of a dozen coconut-battered shrimp trembling on skewers jabbed into a pineapple.

“Mr. Fireman knows exactly what people want: almost everything,” Ruth Reichl wrote in a Times review in 1997 that awarded Redeye Grill one star.

Mr. Fireman’s decision to situate two large establishments on West 57th Street with “Brooklyn” in their names — Brooklyn Diner and USA Brooklyn Delicatessen — did not derive from a love of sauerkraut-smothered hot dogs and strawberry cheesecake.

He named them, he said, because he “knew Brooklyn would sell.”

Not all of Mr. Fireman’s ventures lasted. Fiorella, which opened in 1983 on the Upper East Side, was rated “fair” by the Times critic Mimi Sheraton. She described the restaurant as “lively” but the food as “exhausted.” After a reinvention as a fish restaurant — and, in 1999, a change of name to Fireman’s of Brooklyn — it eventually closed.

Florian, a rare venture downtown for Mr. Fireman, opened on Park Avenue South at East 19th Street in 2014 and closed three years later.

“Every trend has its opposites, the ying to their yang,” Mr. Fireman told Forbes magazine in 2018. “For example, greasy hamburger places are growing, and yet healthy food places are growing too. So we try to ying it and yang it every day, and not just jump at every new trend.

“Exactly what we don’t want to be is too trendy,” he added. “I want to not be trendy.”

Sheldon Martin Fireman was born in the Bronx on Nov. 22, 1931, the elder of two children of Frances (Moses) and Samuel Fireman. His father worked in the garment district.

Shelly graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School and attended Hartwick College in upstate New York, but did not graduate.

He is survived by his wife, Marilyn Fireman, whom he married in 1970, and their son, John.

Mr. Fireman was hanging around Greenwich Village in the early 1960s when he hit on the idea of opening a bagel shop to serve the hipsters on MacDougal Street. He spent three months at the New York Public Library reading about the restaurant business, then opened the Hip Bagel. It became popular with jazz musicians and artists.

After a few years, he joined a restaurant group and opened a steak place, the Tin Lizzie, on West 51st Street, which the artist Peter Max helped design.

He remained active into his 90s. He opened Paris Bar, a brasserie, and Le Jardin, a rooftop bar, both in the Meridien Hotel on West 57th Street, in 2024. Forbes asked him in 2018 why he continued to conceive new projects.

“It’s like having one object of art and staring at it,” he answered. “After a while it gets boring. Otherwise, what do I do? Watch a soap opera?”