An oral history of Chicago’s biggest restaurant group as it turns 50: From ‘one of the worst restaurant names of all time’ to a possibly cannabis-laced future

The Pump Room. Ed Debevic’s. Everest. Studio Paris. Restaurants that have found themselves woven into the history of Chicago and the fond memories of countless diners.

At the helm of those, plus another 100 or so in Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; and, of course, Chicago, is Lettuce Entertain You, the industry behemoth that witnessed — and played no small part in shaping — the modern era of dining.

Its first restaurant, RJ Grunts, continues to draw crowds 50 years after opening in the Lincoln Park neighborhood on June 10, 1971, as do other Lettuce mainstays of Chicago dining. With its finger on the pulse of what Chicagoans want on their plates, the city’s largest restaurant group continues to deliver hit after hit, from introducing tapas bars to Chicago with Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba! in 1985, to recent critical darlings Aba and Pizzeria Portofino.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Lettuce Entertain You, the Tribune spoke with key figures within the enterprise about its past — and its future. Here is an oral history of the restaurant group that started it all.

Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

The beginning

Rich Melman, co-founder and chairman of the board of Lettuce Entertain You: We were a middle-class to lower-middle-class family. So I had always worked. Then my dad moved up. I worked for him and his partner. I think after about five years of working for them, I had saved up $800 or $1,000.

I was living at home and watching every penny. I wanted to buy in and become a partner with them. They said, “Give us a day or so to think about it.” They sat me down and said, “We’d like to see you settled, married and maybe start a family.”

That was the farthest thing from my mind. I was 26 years old or something.

It was very frustrating for me. I just worked so hard. I thought I did such a good job. But at any rate, after the disappointment of them turning me down, I waited a few days and then I just gave notice. I said I just didn’t want to be there.

I went through a series of jobs. Nobody ever listened to any ideas I had. I worked for some people that were very controlling. There could be the smallest thing, and they wanted to have approval before anything was done.

One day I was driving home and said to myself that these folks don’t know if I have any talents or not, because they never give me an opportunity. I decided I wanted to do it myself. I didn’t care if it was a 10-seat restaurant.

I realized after talking to people that I didn’t have anywhere near enough money. So I went about asking everybody I knew if they’d like to invest in a restaurant with me. In those days, for $25,000, you could have owned 25% of Lettuce Entertain You, which believe me, would have been a hell of an investment today.

Finally I met someone who believed in me.

His name was Jerry A. Orzoff. A friend of mine who was a cheerleader when we both went to Kelvyn Park High School introduced me to Jerry. We didn’t hit it off. He thought I was a punk. I thought he was a jerk. About what, I don’t know. Nine months later, this other friend that we both had said to me, “I want to introduce you to Jerry Orzoff.” I said, “I met him.” He said, “Yeah, I’m telling you, you and he got the wrong impression.”

So we met a second time, and this time, we really hit it off. We had a lot in common. We came from similar backgrounds. Both our mothers were servers when we were younger. And he became my best friend, my mentor, my business guru. There is no doubt in my mind that I never would have accomplished what I did without Jerry being there. He was there to guide me along the way in the real estate business.

He found this location in Lincoln Park and said, “Let’s try it.”

R.J. Grunts: ‘One of the worst restaurant names of all time’

Rich Melman: In 1970, the year before we opened our first restaurant, I was with a friend of mine, who I was very impressed with, because he had gone to, I think, University of Denver. They had a restaurant management program. His name was David. I said, “Let’s work on the menu together. And he said, “We gotta get high.” I said, “Great.” We got high. And we put down all these ideas that we had. The next day I looked at them, and they were awful.

Marijuana was just a big part of what was going on.

Anyway, we opened up R.J. Grunts in ’71. That might have been one of the worst restaurant names of all time. R was for Richard and J was for Jerry. He had a girlfriend Debbie, who was terrific, and her nickname was Piggy. She used to make these guttural sounds when she ate. That’s where the name came from, the R and the J and the sound pigs make grunting.

I believed this restaurant was what my generation wanted: The music, the people that worked there, the whole philosophy. There were hippie-style restaurants that were around before me. But the thing I remember about those places was if you had an eight o’clock movie to go to, and you got to the restaurant at 6 o’clock, there was no guarantee that you were going to be out by 7:30 p.m. to make an 8 o’clock show. They were sort of run loosely.

I had worked in good places. I wanted to take the feelings and the music and the kids that worked there, and everything that goes with this lifestyle of what we’re doing, but I wanted to be more professional.

But the early days of the restaurant were slow. The restaurant only holds around 90 or 100 people, and there was nobody there. I mean, nobody came for the longest time. I didn’t know what I had done wrong. I put every ounce of my imagination and my energy and know-how into that little restaurant.

And yet, it wasn’t catching on.

But Jerry thought it was terrific. When I would just get down, he would say, “Oh, it’s gonna happen.” That helped me a little bit, but it was really difficult. It took, I don’t know, 2½ months, maybe three months. It seemed like years to me. I was depressed at the end there. He would say, “Well, tomorrow, people are going to come,” and they just never did.

And then one day, they did.

I walked in, and it was the first time I ever saw the restaurant full. There were maybe four or five people waiting in line in the front there. We’d never seen more than 20 people at a time in the restaurant. From then on, it got busy. It was just crazy. It just was a magical thing, and I’ll never know exactly why.

The only thing I could think of was maybe, astrologically, it was time. We were really into astrology in those days. I wasn’t that into it, but the servers were. They would come to me and say, “Richard, you’ve got to hire a Sagittarian, it’s going to balance out this team.” On our first application forms, right at the top, you’d put down your name, address, birth sign. We had astrologers in the restaurant working at different times, and everybody was into it.

We had three menus when we started. They didn’t last long. We had a luncheon menu that was very straight. We had a dinner menu that was very straight. I showed people the dinner menu, and they laughed. They said, “What is duck doing on here? What’s Dungeness crab doing on there?” And I said, “Well, I worked in restaurants and kitchens, and those were things I liked and knew how to make, so that’s what I did.”

But the 9 p.m. menu, which went from 9 to like 2 o’clock in the morning, that was the menu. It was all the fun stuff. That was the only menu people would comment about. And so, by the time it got busy, right at the time, you know, like the 2½-month mark, I said to hell with it, I’m just going to do this one menu. That was for kids that were high.

It was a phenomenon. We had celebrities and athletes. It just caught on. It was a very “in” place.

The next gen

Within five years, Melman and Orzoff open four more restaurants, including a re-creation of The Pump Room, a stylish magnet for Hollywood elite like Frank Sinatra, Liza Minnelli and Cary Grant. Melman helps launch the Taste of Chicago. Orzoff dies in 1981, while Lettuce Entertain You goes on to launch restaurants in Arizona and Las Vegas. Melman gets married and has three children: R.J., Jerrod and Molly.

R.J. Melman, president of Lettuce Entertain You: When I was 6, my dad was opening Shaw’s Crab House in 1985. Molly was born around then, so I got to go to work. I remember him letting me play in the cooler. There were all sorts of live creatures, lobsters and crabs and mussels. I convinced him to let me take some clams home as pets.

Molly Melman, executive partner and divisional training manager: I remember going to “take your daughter to work day.” It was fun, because it wasn’t like going to the office. He might go to five or 15 different places, and then I’d follow him along to a tasting at the corporate kitchen. There was so much excitement and variety.

Jerrod Melman, executive partner: He didn’t drag us to work; we wanted to go with him. So many times it was so cool, the spaces were under construction, which was so awesome. I was fascinated watching him shape how these restaurants came together. He’d spend a few hours on a construction site tweaking paint colors. It might seem mundane, but he spends a lot of time on lighting and acoustics. He wants the music to sound clear, but for you to hear the people you are talking with. It’s sort of unique to have a singular passion for 50 years.

Molly Melman: He was also bringing work home. I vividly remember these little buns that he put into a steamer. That eventually turned into Wow Bao.

R.J. Melman: I always loved it from the beginning. My first job when I was 7 was at Ed Debevic’s. I bussed bread at age 11. I loved cooking.

Jerrod Melman: The restaurant I loved the most was called The Eccentric. Famously, it opened with Oprah Winfrey in 1989. That was my first heartbreak of having a menu item I loved that didn’t do well. It had to come off the menu.

Molly Melman: My favorite was the original Bub City that was over Joe’s. When I was little, I’d smash the frozen Charleston Chew.

How we got to here

In its current iteration, Lettuce Entertain You operates 130 restaurants spanning six states. Past employees include Stephen Colbert, Jane Lynch and David Schwimmer, while others have risen in the ranks to become one of the company’s more than 75 partners.

Susan Weaver, chef-partner of Mon Ami Gabi, Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba! and Beatrix: I left Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts after 20 years to do my own restaurant in New York City, and we were signing our lease on Sept. 13, 2001. After 9/11, we didn’t go forward.

So I did some consulting, took a break, and one of my friends told me Lettuce was looking for a chef for the Mon Ami Gabi restaurants. I said, “OK, why not?” I talked to Rich on the phone for about a month and we got to know each other. I came to Chicago to do a tasting for him, and that was it.

I just adored him from the get-go. Four Seasons was a family business — (founder) Isadore Sharp and his family were always the nucleus, that’s how we thought of the company — and I felt that same familiarity with Rich. There was that same kindness and authenticity of culture, wanting to project that into how the business is run. It’s not just tag lines; you understand he’s a really kind person.

Jerrod Melman: We all worked in the restaurants growing up through high school and college. But there wasn’t any pressure. Dad’s work seemed really fun. It was clearly his life’s passion. As I was nearing the end of school, all I had done was work in seven or eight restaurants. I decided to go through the Lettuce Entertain You’s management training program. That was 15 years ago, and I haven’t looked back.

Molly Melman: I worked as a host and a server through high school and college. But then I went a different path. I wanted something that was my own where my name didn’t mean anything. I did Teach for America and taught kindergarten in the South Bronx. When I moved back to Chicago in 2008, my brothers needed help at Hub 51, so I hopped behind the front stand. I loved being at work every day and loved the energy.

Jerrod Melman: When I graduated from college, I was managing Osteria Via Stato. At the time, R.J. was in between gigs, and he had a month where he didn’t need to be anywhere. I asked if he wanted to help me out. We are four years apart, so we hadn’t spent a lot of time together before. But it ended up being a lot of fun, and we complemented each other well. We started asking ourselves, “What would a restaurant that we opened look like? What kind of food and music would play?” Those daydreams led to Hub 51.

R.J. Melman: Hub 51 was everything we wanted to go out and eat. It was built on our social life and our friends. That was such a fun time, because we just had one restaurant. Molly came back and worked in the front. We spent so much time with the team. It was a special time in all our lives.

Jerrod Melman: There were two years there where we gave it our undivided attention (before opening their next project, Paris Club). It’s hard to say it broke our heart when Paris Club closed, because so many great things came from it. It was an unbelievable time. I met so many people. And two great projects, Ramen-San and Il Porcellino, came out of it. It’s hard to be heartbroken, and it was still fun doing it.

RJ Melman: The restaurant didn’t work in the long haul, but it taught us a really good lesson, and set us up for RPM. But I still think it’s great that our biggest project was a French restaurant. It did teach us a little bit about scale. Maybe if it had 100 fewer seats it would have worked? But overall, I don’t have a lot of regrets.

Stephen Gillanders, executive chef-owner of S.K.Y. and Apolonia: I left New York after working for Jean-Georges Vongerichten for a decade and planned on opening S.K.Y. in Los Angeles. I was having a really hard time finding traction. I had a colleague reach out and say, “If you want to get some steam under you, Rich Melman is doing this incubator project called Intro in Chicago.”

Two days later, I was on the phone with Rich, and a week later, I was on a plane to Chicago to do a tasting for him. We hit it off immediately, and he was very excited about the food I was making. He just immediately stepped into that role of being, like, the Yoda of sorts. He mentioned I had a little bit of a gap in European influence on my cooking, and then sent me to Europe for a few weeks, just after doing one tasting with him. I came back and became the chef at Intro in 2015.

Susan Weaver: With Rich, it’s about the food. Whether it’s lowbrow, highbrow, or middle of the road, good food is good food. He’s as excited about a cheeseburger as he is about any elaborate, Michelin-starred meal.

With cooking, we can intellectualize and read up on technique, but it really happens when you get to the stove and get your hands dirty. That’s when it really becomes fun and when we really find a hit. We know that when Rich lights up, that’s when it’s happening. And sometimes he’ll surprise us with that, and his light bulb will go off, and that’s it. That one food item, he can create a whole world around it. The genius of Rich Melman is that he knows, and I trust that 1,000%.

Stephen Gillanders: I always say that my decade I spent with Jean-Georges was like my doctorate, but I really got my Ph.D. from Rich. He showed me the non-chef-driven side of it. Lettuce attaches itself to a concept they feel would have a lot of success, and it showed me there’s a duality. It can’t just be Stephen Gillanders’ restaurant. It has to have more heart and soul. You have to let people know what to expect.

Rich still does that, and he’s one of those people who only says what he means. If someone says, “You want the shirt off my back?” that’s an expression. If Rich said that, he would be unbuttoning his shirt. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him, and I don’t think S.K.Y. or Apolonia would exist without him. He’s kind of one of those unsung heroes.

Here’s to the next 50

Susan Weaver: We just opened Little Ba-Ba-Reeba! on Clark Street, and R.J., Jerrod and Molly were all involved. And I had a moment with Rich and said, “I’ve enjoyed working with you for 18 years, but I have to tell you, I’ve enjoyed working with the kids equally this month.” I refer to them as kids, but of course they aren’t kids anymore. They bring that specialness themselves; it carries through somehow.

Molly Melman: Our dad was still extremely involved during the pandemic. He was also making phone calls and checking in.

Jerrod Melman: We wanted to keep our dad as safe as possible, so he hunkered down in Phoenix. But it’s been wonderful that we’ve been on our own, and we’ve gotten so close with our team. That’s the silver lining of this crazy year. The job has been a little different and scarier, but I like the people I work with even more after this year and a half.

Rich Melman: (As to whether the celebrated salad bar will return at R.J. Grunt’s) I think it’s gonna wind up being a digital salad bar. I’m OK if they tear it out. We haven’t been using it for a year. And salad bar sales had gone down. It wasn’t as popular as it was at one time. So we’re gonna see if we could put it on people’s phones and see how it works. Hopefully people will like the digital and if not, I’ll put it back.

Molly Melman: We’ve missed restaurants so much, and people are so excited to be back.

Jerrod Melman: We’ve been cautiously optimistic all along. But we didn’t know the kind of demand there would be when things opened back up. Turns out, there is so much demand. Every day, I’m talking to someone saying, “This is my first time out in a year.”

Rich Melman: I just asked RJ, who’s the president of Lettuce, if it’s going to be legal for us to have cannabis in food, and he said not yet. He said it might happen, but it’s not certain whether it will happen. If it did, I would do it. Maybe I take a great chocolate or strawberry milkshake and make it cannabis-friendly.

Susan Weaver: I think this past year has given us all a moment to truly understand the challenges we have to see ourselves through the pandemic. I think we went into the pandemic with a very strong culture of taking care of people, and that has only intensified. There has been some light shone on the industry, and people are making other career choices, so we need to do the best we can to provide a comfortable place for people to be with us.

R.J. Melman: Honestly, the best opportunities of our careers are coming up. We’re opening locations of Aba in Austin, Texas; and Miami. For us, we are very excited about the future and the cool projects that are coming. We have some really amazing people and are thrilled with our team.

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