TomTom is here to stay– at least for the foreseeable future, anyway.
Days after former Vanderpump Rules star and longtime SUR manager Peter Madrigal heavily speculated in a podcast interview that TomTom–- the restaurant Lisa Vanderpump and husband Ken Todd opened with Tom Schwartz and Tom Sandoval in 2018– -was being rebranded as Pump, Lisa is setting the record (and Peter) straight.
In a statement to Us Weekly, the restauranteur denied Peter’s claim, while also providing more context on what actually is going on at the West Hollywood establishment.
“When we closed Pump, we moved some of the staff and our chef to TomTom, as they were so good, so we’ve been affectionately calling the back garden of TomTom the Pump Garden,” she said. “But that happened months ago!”
Lisa went on to say that the idea to rebrand TomTom as Pump– the popular restaurant and lounge located near TomTom that she and Ken operated from 2014 to 2023– isn’t even on her radar.
“Hadn’t thought about rebranding at all, but thanks for the idea Peter! LOL,” Lisa stated.
While the ‘Vanderpump Rules’ matriarch isn’t planning a Pump revival, she has plenty of other businesses in the works to keep her busy, including her new establishment Pinky’s by Vanderpump that is set to open this fall in Las Vegas.
“We’ve been hard at work on Pinky’s at the Flamingo [Hotel] in Las Vegas,” she said. “Does [Peter] want to change the name of that, too?”
Upon its opening, Pinky’s will be the third venue that Lisa has brought to Sin City; in March 2019, she opened Vanderpump Cocktail Garden in Caesars Palace and in April 2022, she opened Vanderpump à Paris, located in the Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino.
In addition to their Los Angeles and Las Vegas restaurants, Lisa, Ken and their business partners also operate Wolf by Vanderpump in Lake Tahoe, which opened in late 2023 and celebrated its official grand opening in April.
(Lisa and Ken’s Beverly Hills restaurant Villa Blanca– which occasionally served as a filming spot on ‘Vanderpump Rules’ along with Pump and the show’s OG setting SUR– closed its doors in 2020 after 12 years.)
While Peter’s Pump predictions turned out to be false, he had also hinted last week that Schwartz & Sandy’s, the restaurant Sandoval and Schwartz opened as majority owners in 2022, may also be here today, gone TOMorrow in jeopardy.
As fans may remember, the establishment was hit hard in the wake of Scandoval, with ‘Vanderpump Rules’ fans boycotting the joint, tanking its online reviews and even vandalizing the property. More than a year later, the restaurant has yet to fully bounce back, according to Peter, who claimed that he “heard through the grapevine” that the place is now a “ghost town.”
Sandoval and Schwartz have yet to comment on Peter’s statements regarding the current state of Schwartz & Sandy’s.
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(Photos: Bravo; Instagram)
