Rolling Up His Sleeves

For Simi Polozani, owner of Bia American Kitchen in Chappaqua, building and running a restaurant means always working alongside his crew and staff.

By Gia Miller     

Photography by Justin Negard

Opening a restaurant is not for the faint of heart. Everything from financing and construction to finding and hiring good employees can cause delays and additional stress. And keeping a restaurant open, especially as food prices continue to rise, can make even the calmest and most optimistic person feel anxious. But Simi Polozani, who opened Bia American Kitchen in Chappaqua Crossing last August, has endured this stress-inducing adventure multiple times. His secret? He rolls up his sleeves and dives right in.

Food spread from Bia American Kitchen.

Building the skills

When Polozani was 22 years old, his father passed away, and it fell to him to support his mother and two sisters. So Polozani moved from Macedonia to the U.S. to work as a prep chef and busboy at the French restaurant, L’Europe, in South Salem, owned by two of his uncles. It wasn’t an easy move; besides leaving his family behind, Polozani had recently begun dating a woman, Miranda, who stayed in Macedonia to finish school. Plus, he barely spoke any English. But Polozani made the best of his situation.

“After seven or eight months, I picked up enough English to become a server,” he says.

Polozani and Miranda dated long distance for two years, using payphones and calling cards to keep in touch as best they could. When he finally returned for a visit, Polozani sought Miranda’s father’s permission (there were a few no’s before the yes), and he proposed. The two continued their long-distance relationship for another year and a half until they married in Macedonia, and then she moved to the U.S. to finish her finance degree. After graduation, she began working at Citigroup in asset management.

Around the same time, Polozani transitioned from the restaurant to construction.

“I always wanted to build stuff,” he says. “So, I began working for my brother-in-law, who was a mason. Then I moved to a large construction company in Ridgefield. But I still worked part-time at the restaurant as a server or a bartender a couple of nights a week.”

Polozani spent approximately 14 years in the construction industry, beginning with residential properties before moving to commercial construction seven years later. After about three years in the industry, he began managing his own construction projects and maintaining properties.

Bar at Bia.

Back to his roots

“The first restaurant I built for myself was Barnwood Grill in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2013,” he says. “My partner had worked in restaurants as a manager, and we were great friends. We still are.”

Polozani enjoyed it, but with three young kids at home, restaurant life was too much. After two years, he sold his shares and resumed his construction business.

“In construction, you’re done at four or five o’clock, and you go home,” he explains. “You can leave something halfway done and finish it the next day. A restaurant is not halfway. It’s seven days a week.”

But Polozani didn’t stay away for too long. He quickly began building restaurants; about eight of them were for a friend. For Polozani, “building” a restaurant includes sketching out the design, managing/participating in construction (he’s there hammering nails alongside the carpenters), coordinating/managing all subcontractors, selecting and ordering the furniture, artwork, light fixtures and more.

“When I build a restaurant, I manage the whole project, and then I come to opening night, hand you the keys, and I leave,” says Polozani.

In 2016, two years after he left Barnwood Grill, Polozani built and opened Prime Pub in Bethel. He hired a manager to run the day-to-day operations and continued building restaurants for others. In 2017, he built and opened Prime Pub in Danbury.

When COVID-19 hit, Polozani didn’t back away. Instead, he built an addition to his Bethel location, adding a private dining room with 50 additional seats. He also opened his third Prime Pub, this time in Somers, in 2021.

“He didn’t close his restaurants or let go of any employees,” Miranda explains. “I still had my job, so we were okay. He didn’t make any money at the restaurants, but he didn’t want to let anyone go. When we talked about it, he explained that everyone has a family they need to support.”

He kept the lights on, the bills paid and maintained a payroll of 40 to 50 full-time employees, never missing a payment or second-guessing his decision.

Simi Polozani cooking.

Doing something different

“I built Bia because I wanted to do something different,” says Polozani. “I wanted to open a bigger restaurant with a different concept, and I always wanted to open a more high-end restaurant. We do a lot of parties at the Prime Pub restaurants, but I wanted to take a different approach for that as well.”

Polozani knew his current location was the perfect spot for this concept the moment he saw it. He could envision what the completed restaurant would look like, and it’s almost exactly that way today. But securing the location began with convincing the Chicago-based hedge fund that owned the building to lease the property to him instead of to the other applicants.

Once the space was his, Polozani finalized his designs, secured permits, hired a crew and built the restaurant.

“I was the general contractor, and I was here seven days a week, hammering nails, chopping up the concrete,” he explains. “It took 11 months for this big restaurant to be built, and I was here until 11 o’clock on most nights.”

Polozani focused on every detail, from the chairs (“I had a very hard time finding these chairs.”) and table placement (“Almost every table is a corner or end seat; nobody wants to sit in the middle of a dining room.”) to the wallpaper (“My wife designed the wallpaper and found a company to make it exactly how we wanted.”), and even the curved wood ceiling, which he carefully cut to achieve the proper form.

“We cut the wood, we sanded it, we placed it, then I went on vacation for five days,” he remembers. “Guess what they did? They polyurethaned it. So, I sanded it again because I didn’t want it to shine. Then we sealed it. That created a sheen, so we sanded it again.”

But the most difficult and time-consuming piece of the build was the giant chandelier in the dining room, which Polozani conceived, sketched out and built himself, steel and all. He didn’t involve an architect or engineer—it was all him.

“It took me about one year to design it,” he remembers. “But I couldn’t hang it from the ceiling because there is no load-bearing beam down the center, so I had to figure out how to do it. The two steel guys in my construction crew were a big help. But then I went to every electrical store in Connecticut, some in New York, and some in New Jersey to buy the lights; I needed 250 globe lights, and no one would sell them to me. So, I had to buy them from a company overseas.”

When it came to the food, Polozani worked with his chef and a few consultants to create a robust menu.

“We use high-quality, fresh, seasonal ingredients, and we source from local farms as much as possible,” says chef Bill DeLuca. “Anything we make in-house is gluten-free, including all our desserts, and we also have a lot of vegetarian options. And everything is cooked to order, even for large parties.”

They make small changes to the menu frequently, based on feedback from customers (“They wanted more fish, so now there’s more fish on the menu.”) along with what is in season and available, and they change most of the menu once a season. But several tried-and-true dishes always remain, like salads, burgers, a chicken dish and “some meat.”

These days, you’ll still find Polozani, who has since sold the Prime Pubs in CT but still owns the one in Somers, rolling up his sleeves and diving in with his staff, many of whom have been with him since he opened his first Prime Pub. He might greet you at the door, make your cocktail, bake your dessert (try his Grand Marnier soufflé—it’s a recipe from his days at L’Europe), repair something that’s broken or even clean the bathrooms.

“I work seven days a week, 16 hours a day, most of the time, and I’m still happy,” he says. “But the best thing for me is to work all day long and then go home; that makes me happy. I love going home after a long day and seeing my kids, even if they are asleep. I’ll just peek in their rooms to see them asleep at the end of my day. That’s the best; you cannot buy that.”

“I’m a happy person,” Polozani says. “I love what I’m doing, and I’m happy with what I have.”

This article was published in the March/April 2025 edition of Connect to Northern Westchester.