I'm Going to Miss This Place

The Number 5 Restaurant closed its doors for good a couple of weeks ago. It's owner, Jim McCoy has also owned Lampy's in Endicott for many years. After closing Number 5, McCoy has merged the two restaurants together at the Lampy's location and has renamed the restaurant McCoy's Chop House.

When it comes to fine dining in Binghamton, my favorite place to go for special occasions was always the Number 5. I didn't go there often, but when I did, I felt important. Just the history of the building alone made for a great dining ambiance. The food and the service was always impeccable. Jim and his staff always did a great job at training new hires.

I have many special memories from that restaurant. Years ago, representatives from the record companies would come to town a couple of times a year and take the radio people out for dinner. They would come to town to play new releases from familiar bands as well as unknown bands. A lot of the record company dinners took place at Number 5. If they were fitting the bill, we always thought we might as well go big.

We used to tease the record reps and tell them that if they slid down the fire-pole we would add one of their songs to the playlist that week. A couple of record reps actually took us up on that challenge.

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On a couple occasions, a bunch of record representatives from different companies came to town and invited radio people from Binghamton, Elmira, and Ithaca to the Number 5 for dinner. We all had a great time sitting around talking about music and just everyday things.

The highlight of one of those mass gatherings was when we found out that NFL Hall of Fame member Johnny Unitas was dining downstairs. Unitus used to come to town to do work for the Matthew's Auto Group. We asked our server if they would mind asking him if we could have a group picture taken with him. Johnny obliged and came upstairs and
had pictures taken with us as a group, as well as all of us individually. I still have that picture to this day.

So even though the revolving doors at the restaurant may have stopped revolving, I will always have fond memories of the Number 5.