It’s not often that a restaurant makes it past its first five years, let alone spans half a century. That’s why when Lettuce Entertain You, one of Chicago’s most venerable restaurant groups, hit its 50th year this June, I wanted to learn more about its reasons for its success. Many notable chefs, bartenders, and managers in the city have done stints at LEYE properties – what’s the secret?
When I caught LEYE founder and chairman Rich Melman on the phone, he was just coming out of a tasting – even after 50 years, he still enthusiastically does tastings, despite having probably tried every variation on everything in his restaurants 10 times over. “I’ve been monkeying around with waffles for a while, and the test kitchen chef did them perfectly today.” (By the way, expect to find waffles soon at Summer House Santa Monica).
Melman is a very hands-on boss, and is constantly meeting with chefs, trying dishes, and making connections. “I’m not so good in a boardroom. My instincts aren’t good there,” explains Melman. “I have to see the place, feel the place, taste the food, and talk to the people and the customers.”
You may know that Melman’s first restaurant was the spot that “invented” the salad bar, R.J. Grunts, which he opened with partner Jerry Orzoff. But I’ll bet you can’t name LEYE’s second restaurant. It was called Fritz, That’s It (which may be the most 1973 name ever), and it was an offshoot of R.J. Grunts in Evanston, with the clever tagline “You’ve tried the Ritz, now try the Fritz.” Located in a space that had previously been an office of famed politician Abner Mikva, it was something of a joke for Melman. “It was named after a newspaper reporter we didn’t like that we met at a party. We thought it would be funny to name a restaurant after someone we didn’t like.”
The thing I may love most about LEYE is the amazing names it gave its restaurants in the early years, like The Great Gritzbe’s Flying Food Show or Lawrence of Oregano. LEYE originated spots that are now standalone chains like Maggiano’s and Corner Bakery, opened the first tapas bar in Chicago (Café-Ba-Ba-Reeba), and helped launch the revitalization of River North back in the mid-‘80s.
Everyone gushes about the success of LEYE (and rightly so) but every group has some restaurants that just don’t work. Melman couldn’t pinpoint LEYE’s shortest-lived restaurant concept, though he did give a nod to one of my favorites, Intro, which was set up as a sort of rotating think tank for up-and-coming chefs. The most obvious failure he can remember was the location of Café Ba-Ba-Reeba that he opened in Vegas in the early ‘00s. “It just didn’t work,” Melman remembers. “I think if we did it today, it might.”
Melman thinks that one of the most important features of LEYE is that it acts a school for chef/entrepreneurs. It’s not an accident that so many LEYE alums go on to open their own restaurants and even restaurant groups. “We are great developers of people,” explains Melman. “If I hire a chef, the number one thing is I have to like them as a person – if I don’t like someone as a person, why would I be with them? After that, I like to pick someone that I think will be a mentor to other people. Then, the last thing is I have to sense if they are open to learning about business.”
Lots of big names have come through LEYE (think Stephen Gillanders of S.K.Y., Curtis Duffy of Ever, Michael Kornick of DMK, or Stephanie Izard of Girl and the Goat), but there were some I didn’t know about. Brendan Sodikoff, the chef/owner behind places like Bavette’s and Au Cheval, worked in the LEYE test kitchen (and happens to be “an item” with Melman’s daughter). The owners of the Fifty/50 Restaurant Group (who Melman refers to as “the kids from Roots”) used to be managers at Joe’s Stone Crab.
Even now, with 50 years of restaurants under his belt, Melman still thinks he has things to learn. “I still need mentors,” he says. “Sometimes people that mentor me don’t know they are mentoring me. I’ll read an article and something in it pops out at me. When you want to be great at what you do, there’s always more to learn.”
I wish Lettuce Entertain you never existed. Their philosophy of making eye catching decor for twenty somethings combined with their bean counter philosophy of making everything with the cheapest ingredients has been a blight on the Chicago Foodie scene for too long.
This is why their chain serves ups such bad food everywhere they open one of their corporate chain restaurants. They drive out independents who are really interested in making good food for all of us.
Maggianos is the worst Italian restaurant in the world. Cheap ingredients served up on big plates in this pretend place is just a travesty. I have eaten their twice unfortunately. Each time, the cheap food they dish out made me feel ill.
Cafe Ba BA Reeba is even worse. It is fast food tapas served up again with low cost ingredients that actually did make me feel ill the last time I was there. Thank god we are finally going to have a real tapas place with real tapas ingredients when Jaleo opens on Thursday.
This chain is the worst chain in the USA. It is a food fraud that they can open so many mediocre places all over Chicago committing foodie fraud in every single one of their mediocre and worse places.
There should be a limit to how many bad restaurants these corporate bosses open. Enough already.
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Rich Melman is brilliant and a very charismatic people person.
Richard had influenced me in my career when I worked as a manager over 30 years ago. His personal coaching, leadership, and empathy when I had struggles helped me be successful in my career and I often refer back to his standards and viewpoints. No other leader has come close to developing me to be the leader I had become. Thank you Rich. Bill Billings
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Mon Ami Gabi has the best WILD ESCARGOTS DE BOURGOGNE (oven-roasted snails, garlic-herb butter)…that with a dirty GABITINI (grey goose, blue cheese olives, and olive juice) and I’m in Heaven!
Is Mon Ami Gabi in Oak Brook part of LEYE?
There is a Mon Ami Gabi in Oakbrook.There is also one in Lincoln Park and also one in Las Vegas.
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