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Roy’s Club is back.

Nearly a decade after the legendary Italian restaurant and cocktail lounge shut its doors, Roy’s is slated to reopen next month as a music venue and event space.

The new business owner, Sidoma Bowen, a hairstylist at Studio One Salon in Eureka, has big plans for the Old Town institution, with hopes to reopen the restaurant and eventually buy the building. But first, she’s going to bring back the bar.

“My goal is to keep the bar as is,” Bowen told the Outpost during a tour of Roy’s Club this week. “I don’t want to change anything, just give it a good clean and let the people who enjoyed Roy’s come in and enjoy that same exact experience. Obviously, it’s going to be different with me running the business, but I want it to be welcoming for them — for everyone.”

There are relics from the past scattered throughout the cavernous, wood-paneled bar and dining room — an oil painting of Dionysus, a hulking metal cash register, dusty strands of artificial English ivy and copper light fixtures handcrafted by Roy’s longtime owner, Evo Fanucchi. 

The decor and furniture will eventually be updated, but Bowen emphasized that she wants to preserve the character of Roy’s as best she can. She envisions the north side of the building, where the deli used to be, as an event space and hub for local nightlife, but she wants to keep the bar more or less the same.

“I’m never gonna change the bones of this place,” she said. “I want to make sure that the people who enjoyed Roy’s Club feel comfortable and welcome because a lot of the feedback I’ve received did come from the people who used to [frequent the restaurant]. …  I got message after message from people saying, ‘My mom or my grandpa used to take me here!’ It was very heartwarming, and I want to make sure the space is being loved and taken care of.”

The two-story building at 218 D Street has hosted a handful of businesses over the past century, starting as a sausage factory in the early 1900s. Italian immigrants Angelo and Teresa Fanucchi purchased the building in 1919, just before the United States entered the Prohibition era, and set up a cigar shop on one side and a hidden speakeasy on the other. The couple moved into the upstairs apartment with their three children — Evo, Ida and Roy — who grew up watching bootleggers and gangsters scurry throughout Old Town. 

In 1945, Roy and Evo took over the family business, which had shuttered briefly when the brothers served in World War II, and rebranded it as “Roi’s Club,” an Italian restaurant and cocktail lounge. The restaurant was named after the eldest Fanucchi brother, whose name was misspelled on his birth certificate and again misspelled by the artist who designed the business logo, according to an article in the Humboldt Historian. An artist would finally get the spelling right years later, when Evo and his wife, Catherine, started selling “Roi’s” sauces and salad dressings. 

Roy’s Club has sat largely untouched since 2017, when Evo and Catherine shuttered the restaurant and bar after 70 years of business. Evo died eight years later at 105. Catherine no longer lives in the apartment upstairs, but she still owns the building.

Asked about next steps for Roy’s, Bowen said she still has a few bureaucratic hoops to jump through (approval from the health department, ABC license and city permitting, etc.), but she hopes to start hosting events as soon as she’s up and running. 

“I’ve been throwing events at the Eagle House, the Shanty and Siren’s Song in the past year, mostly burlesque performances,” she said. “I want to provide a place for whatever is different and whatever we don’t already have here, but I’m open to anything; comedy, music, drag shows, burlesque — all of it.”

Eventually, she plans to reopen the restaurant, but she’s not quite sure what’s on the menu.

“I actually have no idea,” she laughed. “I’ve been in talks with someone, and we’ve made many mock menus of what we want to do, but we haven’t landed on anything yet.”

Asked about financing, Bowen said she hasn’t sought out any investors as of yet, noting that she “prefers to do things on my own.”

“Right now I’m just doing hair, so every balayage, every haircut, everything I do goes into some license or some permit,” she said. “I believe in myself, and with the support that I have and the way that I manage things, I feel like I’m going to be very successful.”

If everything goes according to plan, Bowen will reopen Roy’s Club sometime in September.