The restaurant was founded in 1900 by James, Lewis, and Pete Zaharako, three candymakers from Sparta, Greece, who opened it as a confectionary shop.

[1] By the early 1910s, they had added soda fountains, a mahogany backbar, and a 1908 Welte orchestrion.

[1] The restaurant closed in 2006 when the youngest generation of the Zaharako family weren't interested in continuing to run the business.

[1][5][6] The family living quarters above the shop were also restored, and Moravec also opened the space next door as a museum of 19th-century soda fountains and mechanical musical instruments.

[6][3][8] The restaurant was used as the primary set for Robert Moniot's short film The Ice Cream Man about Ernst Cahn, a Jewish ice cream parlor owner in Amsterdam whose arrest sparked the February Strike.