With a handful of successful restaurants and businesses in Manhattan, in 2019, Michael Tzezailidis was considering opening a farm brewery upstate as his next venture. However, when a former Chase bank building went up for sale in Warwick, where he’d lived since 2017, Tzezailidis instead jumped on the opportunity to create a new dining experience that paid homage to his Greek heritage and the building’s century-old history, while maintaining a contemporary vibe. The Fed—a playful reference to both the former bank and to sated guests— opened in October 2024 and has since seen a steady stream of locals and weekenders alike.
“We’re an upscale-casual bar and grill that’s subtly Greek-inspired—I couldn’t help but include my heritage in the menu, but we don’t look like a typical Greek restaurant,” Tzezailidis says, noting the space’s 20th-century Art Deco influence. “We’re in a 100-year-old building with 30-foot ceilings; it feels a little like Grand Central. It’s an experience that people don’t expect to see this far outside of New York City.”
No stranger to the experiential dining scene, Tzezailidis also runs Manhattan’s upscale Mexican restaurant Taqueria on Tenth and acclaimed bar-restaurant Death Ave. “I’m in the restaurant business and in real estate; I’ve worked restaurants since age 14, in every position, and studied finance, so the two worlds came together when I began opening restaurants in the city,” he explains. “My wife and I originally lived there and had a place in Woodstock, but came to Warwick once for apple picking and thought, ‘Why aren’t we living here?’ We moved up shortly after, and then a couple of years later this building was for sale—it was a gem I couldn’t pass up.”
This gem, however, needed quite a bit of polishing. He purchased the building in December 2019 and says that even without the difficulties of the pandemic just a few months later, the space still would have taken years to transform into a restaurant. “The renovation was grueling,” he says. “It was built by a bank to be a bank—it was a fortress.”
The back of house area formerly contained vaults with three-foot-thick walls and tight quarters for squeezing in kitchen equipment. One of the vault doors was transferred to the entrance of an upstairs private party room that now contains its own bar and seats about 25. A drop ceiling hid soaring sightlines that Tzezailidis wanted to restore as authentically as possible.
“You couldn’t believe how beautiful and ornate the real ceiling was, but half the art and custom molding was missing or damaged, so we made silicone molds to replicate the plaster,” he explains. “It gave the space a personality that’s so different from the rest of Warwick. People who come here like the unique feel; they tend to get dressed up with friends or for date nights, have some cocktails and share plates.”
Upon seating, guests are given a complementary basket of warm pita bread, made in-house from scratch. Tzezailidis says they designed a space in the kitchen just to make these pitas, noting how rare this is for a restaurant, both here in the US and in Greece where most kitchens purchase pitas from specialty bakeries.
Greek dishes tend to be popular picks, but Tzezailidis and his team designed the menu to be palatable to various tastes. “You can get a bacon burger or you can get an eight-hour octopus,” he says. One favorite is the Pasta Santorini, made with either wheat pasta or spiralized zucchini, jumbo shrimp, light tomato garlic, olives, and feta ($38). Mini souvlaki are a flavorful hit with options including grilled steak with zucchini, tender beans, minced onion, and lemon-parsley-cucumber yogurt ($28) or braised eggplant with potato, stewed tomatoes, manouri cheese, and beechamel ($19). That aforementioned eight-hour octopus is sushi-grade Portuguese octopus braised in an earth oven for eight hours and then flash grilled and served over a tender bean salad ($29).
From the bar, a curated wine list offers selections from harsh-climate vineyards—high altitude or arid areas where there’s less of a need for pesticides. Cocktails include trendy twists like a lychee martini or jalapeño margarita made with house-infused jalapeño tequila (cocktails range $15-$19). Mocktails ($10-$12) and beertails ($15-$16) are also popular. Behind the bar you’ll see stacked oak barrels on display which contain aging ready-to-pour cocktails like an old fashioned, a fig julep, and an oaked negroni ($16 each).
Rather than giving off a rustic vibe, the looming barrels add to the turn-of-the-century aesthetic—almost a speakeasy nod—among The Fed’s deep green walls, tan leather banquette and bar seating, and original money-themed art, including an eye-catching portrait of Abraham Lincoln made of pennies by designer Fay Tzezailidis, the owner’s sister. “She and my wife Jessica collaborated on design, creating a really fun environment with a nice vibe and great soul,” he says. “We’re a family-friendly restaurant in the daytime, but the evening feels more sophisticated. I think it scratches the itch for people who want a sense of Manhattan, but here in a quaint town.”
The Fed
This article appears in January 2025.
