About Us

Tori’s Restaurant, named after the teenage daughter of owners Joe and Brenda Lazar is the product of over 20 years combined restaurant experience. And just as parents raise a beloved child, Joe and Brenda have been hands-on in learning, experiencing and collaborating in the restaurant business and envisioning their perfect restaurant.

After six years of success, Joe and Brenda relocated Tori’s Brickhouse from its original Front Street site to a larger newly renovated space at 119 South Street. In doing so they have expanded on the original Tori’s concept of a great neighborhood restaurant loved by locals and foodies alike to create a new Tori’s now offering modern banquet space and state of the art audio visual amenities for corporate functions and special events.

Tori’s Restaurant straddles casual and fine dining. Even with the drama and glamour of hanging crystal chandeliers throughout the dining room and creatively placed stone fountains, there will be no detraction from that in which the Lazars have always believed - providing a relaxed, unpretentious environment and great food for local patrons.

Joe Lazar is excited because this new space has afforded him the opportunity to design and build not only the dream kitchen he has always wanted, but also the dream restaurant. The new Tori’s seats 80 people in the dining room, another 80 in the banquet room, has a raw bar for 10, and a black granite topped bar that seats 20 and projects sporting events on one flat screen and three plasma TVs.

Joe’s new menu draws from a mix of mouth-watering southwestern flavors and Mediterranean ingredients. A self-taught chef who is constantly experimenting in the kitchen, Joe creates cuisine that is at the same time hearty yet delicate and sophisticated in taste.

A menu mainstay from Tori’s Brickhouse is Joe’s spicy shrimp and crab diablo in a red chili and spicy tomato sauce with a 10 oz. lobster tail placed atop a mound of pasta. For a variation on a typical steak one can enjoy the pan seared crawfish-stuffed filet mignon in a red wine bourdelaise with roasted poblano, mashed potatoes and sautéed haricot verts. Classic Tori dishes that traditionalists and longtime friends can always enjoy are “Mom’s Eggplant Parmesan” seasoned with a secret recipe and the chicken piccatta, a sautéed boneless breast of chicken with asparagus and fresh tomatoes in a white wine garlic sauce.

From the beginning, the Lazars have learned the restaurant business by doing. This hands-on approach is how Brenda taught herself how to run all front-of-house restaurant duties including staffing, bookkeeping, and even creating cocktails for the bar. Joe’s greatest mentor was his step father Joseph Lauletta, a self-taught real estate developer, from whom Joe learned the philosophy of not being afraid of getting one’s hands dirty and learning all the jobs it takes to run a restaurant as well as how to be a good businessman.

Joe and Brenda Lazar have a time honored old-fashioned restaurant philosophy: cook from the heart and treat customers as family.