Robert and Zhan Petrosyants

Eric Adams loves to paint the town red, and he isn’t afraid to push back against critics who want him at home in bed after he clocks out. “They’re saying that Eric goes out to restaurants. Breaking news, duh, yes I do and I don’t hide in doing it,” the mayor said in August 2022. For years, two of his favorite people to party with have been identical twin brothers Robert and Zhan (aka Johnny) Petrosyants.

At first glance, Robert and Zhan Petrosyants seem to embody a glitzy, New York City nightlife-tinted version of the American Dream. They grew up in a Christian Armenian family in Turkmenistan, where they told Grub Street they “faced daily dangers and discrimination,” and moved to New York in 1996. Once in the city, the duo became buzzy restaurateurs. It’s a kind of #hustleharder fairy tale—until you learn about all of the decade-plus of various allegations that the brothers have amassed since then: unpaid taxes by a restaurant they funded, numerous unpaid debts for restaurant investments that never materialized, questionable alcohol sales, and convictions for a “check cashing scheme”—one for each brother.

In 2012, the twins opened Woodland, an often-packed brunch spot with an emphasis on Caribbean fare and popping DJ sets in Park Slope—a restaurant Adams began frequenting when he became Brooklyn borough president in 2014, using it as a venue for fundraisers and even final-round interviews for his team. 

Barely a month after Adams took office as BP, both brothers pled guilty to a federal charge in a check-cashing scheme that involved medical billing companies. Adams continued to frequent Woodland, and when the brothers opened up a pizza restaurant called Forno Rosso later that year, the BP was there to help cut the ribbon. (Woodland closed its doors in January 2020, shortly after the State Liquor Authority revoked its liquor license over noise complaints. “Fuck you,” Woodland’s attorney, Frank Carone, allegedly told a lawyer from the SLA during the proceedings. “You are a fucking liar.” In a filing with the court, Carone admitted he called the lawyer a “liar,” but only because the lawyer questioned the “ethics and morals” of his client to the judge. (Forno Rosso shuttered in 2022 over unpaid taxes.)

Perhaps the Petrosyantses’ biggest success is their newest venture, the high-end Italian restaurant Osteria La Baia in the Theater District. Adams has been a vocal fan ever since its grand opening in November 2021. “It’s a great restaurant,” Adams told the Post. A New York Times report published nine months later described Adams holding court in the restaurant, asking staffers to keep it open long after closing time, and receiving guests at his own designated table; Adams reportedly went to the joint 14 times in one month alone. 

Others in the twins’ orbit have reportedly not had quite as good of a time. “They wined and dined me,” a would-be investor told the Times. The man, who alleged in a lawsuit that the Petrosyantses took $350,000 from him for a catering company that never materialized, said: “They built up an image of super successful entrepreneurs with deep political connections.” (The lawsuit is ongoing.) That same Times report noted that at the end of 2022, the brothers still owed millions in unpaid taxes and rent. As of mid-December, they also hadn’t paid back much of the nearly $700,000 they owed after pleading guilty to a financial crime.

But one good thing about a party friend is they don’t have to be squeaky clean—they just need to be fun! 

And critically, as party friends, Adams and the Petrosyantses have some very fun mutuals: “Bling Bishop” Lamor Whitehead, who met with Adams frequently at Woodland, according to the New Yorker; longtime Adams advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin, who told her staffers to expedite a request to the City’s Department of Environmental Protection on behalf of a seafood restaurant the Petrosyantses owned in 2016 (although Robert later denied receiving any help from Lewis-Martin on the matter); Lewis-Martin’s son Glenn, who went from DJing at Woodland to DJing Adams’s events at Brooklyn Borough Hall and Gracie Mansion; Adams’s ultra-connected ex-chief of staff Frank Carone, who both represented Woodland during the liquor license proceedings and invested in a now-bankrupt medical testing company at the behest of the twins; and the mayor’s ex-friend Ronn Torossian, a controversial Trump-affiliated PR executive who also introduced the mayor to the private members club Zero Bond. We can’t forget it girl/real estate agent Eleonora Srugo, another friend of Adams, who had a birthday party at Osteria La Baia in October 2022 which the mayor attended, even if he probably should have stayed in that night, as a fierce rainstorm began to inundate the city with floodwater.

A representative for Adams’s campaign told the New York Times that the mayor’s relationship with the brothers is “one of friendship and mentorship and support.” Politico reported that Adams sometimes even crashes with Johnny at Petrosyants’s Midtown condo after a night out—although City Hall denied it, and why would he need to when they can just split an Uber back to their neighboring homes in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Representatives for the Petrosyants brothers did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The best thing about having party friends is you never know where you’ll bump into them—like when Johnny and Adams happened to be in Mexico at the same time, during the mayor’s “eye-opener” migrant-related tour of Latin America in 2023. Who doesn’t love a boy’s trip?