What was it like growing up here?
You know, it’s just always been a cool place. A lot of locals, a lot of fun people. It was always interesting because as a kid I would go see a movie and then I’d meet the movie stars in person. They were just so different inside this place, so friendly and normal. That was a cool way to grow up.
What’s the story behind the peanuts?
The gentleman who founded Chez Jay is Jay Fiondella. He was a very eccentric guy that was not afraid to have a good time and did things his way. The story is he acquired the lease here for $1 (it used to be a breakfast joint called the Dawn Cafe). Since he was a big actor he got to know a lot of people, and on opening night he brought in an elephant in with a bunch of showgirls. The elephant was able to get into the building and people were like, what do we do now? He said: “let’s feed the elephant peanuts.” That’s where the peanuts started, and it grew from there.
What made it very well known was back when NASA’s headquarters were down the street, a lot of astronauts would come here. Alan Shepherd famously took some of the peanuts to the moon and then brought them back, and the actress Julie Andrews and a couple photographers were here to witness it. When they filmed Titanic, one of the guys that worked on the movie put some of them on the ship. From there it just became this legendary thing. Jay would go to the red carpet and he would throw peanuts at people, so it just became this thing where the peanuts traveled around.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source blog.resy.com ’
