Christy’s restaurant was sold. Here’s what is in store for the Coral Gables steakhouse
Christy’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing since the building where the Coral Gables restaurant has resided for 42 years was sold this week.
Chris Klaic, managing partner for 25 years, arrived daily to find longtime diners peering through the windows into the darkened steakhouse, which closed to control the spread of the coronavirus.
All of them ask the same question: Is it true Christy’s is closed for good? The answer, he said, is a definitive no.
Klaic and Juliana Parada, general manager for the last five years, partnered to buy Christy’s after founder Charles Hauser sold the building for $4 million, according to Law.com. The pair is finalizing a lease with the new owners and hope to reopen the restaurant in mid-August.
“We’re going to keep the legacy going,” Klaic said.
Hauser, 79, founded two of Miami-Dade’s longest running restaurants, Christy’s in 1978, and Red Fish Grill, the waterfront Coral Gables restaurant in Matheson Hammock Park, in 1996.
Christy’s has a Midwest steakhouse feel and has hosted a parade of names: Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, Senators Bob Graham and Connie Mack, Gov. Jeb Bush, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Rod Stewart and Gloria Estefan. They came for the clubby privacy as well as the filet mignon, prime rib and Caesar salad.
But Hauser said he was ready to retire from the restaurant industry. He sold Red Fish last year to the Barreto Group, which painstakingly restored the hurricane-damaged restaurant and plan to reopen it with chef Adrianne Calvo June 23.
“I had a lot of fun,” Hauser said from his summer home in Wisconsin. “It has a great team there and they are going to be very successful.”
Klaic, whose family owns restaurants, hotels and a winery in Croatia, says longtime diners should expect the same Christy’s when it reopens, along with its same chef since 1994, Haitian-American Morales Francois.
“We are not changing anything,” he said. “We know what works and it has been a winning formula for 42 years.”
Christy’s
3101 Ponce de Leon Blvd., Coral Gables
This story was originally published June 19, 2020 at 3:47 PM.
