Jun 2, 2017
Hillary Dixler | Eater
Next, the Chicago restaurant that reinvents itself around a new theme multiple times a year, is currently dedicated to Hollywood. That means guests arrive on a “step and repeat,” as at a red carpet premiere. It also means that each course in the tasting menu is somehow tied to movies generally or a specific film.
To executive chef Jenner Tomaska, food and film are a natural pair. “Whether it be the focal point or not, there’s always some type of hospitality or food related scene in a movie. To me, it’s cool to see when it happens and it’s the focal point.” When it came time to create the menu, Tomaska says he and his team shed their typical “less is more philosophy.” Observers of Next will see a link to some past menus in the look of the food itself, but probably not in the serving pieces. “We had to hit enough nostalgia points and enough movie points, so that every diner that came in could have a reference to something,” the chef explains. “Whether it be to all the movies, or to more than half, is what we really wanted.”
“Although the service pieces have strong visual connections to the films, the dishes themselves are much more interpretive,” says Greg Morabito, who covers pop culture for Eater. Some dishes are quite literal — the Ratatouille course, for example, is basically gourmet ratatouille served on a mousetrap. But for the most part, Jenner says he “kept it open,” playing with flavors and ideas, making “food replicate what the movie stood for.” Beyond highlighting specific movies, Tomaska’s menu also tracks film history, following a chronological progression.
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May 26, 2017
Ariel Cheung | DNAinfo | May 24, 2017
WRIGLEY FIELD — Some of Chicago’s top chefs will dream up new takes on their favorite ballpark eats for a pop-up series at Wrigley Field.
The Cubs are first teaming up with Stephanie Izard, the newly crowned Iron Chef who won the first season of “Iron Chef Gauntlet” earlier this week.
Izard’s ballpark-inspired menu will be offered at the newly renovated Sheffield Counter on the main concourse starting with the St. Louis Cardinals game June 2.
Also a James Beard award recipient and “Top Chef” winner, Izard will carry on with her goat-themed offerings, which are found at her Chicago restaurants Girl & the Goat, Little Goat Diner and Duck Duck Goat.
“Since the inception of our restoration project, our food and beverage offerings have improved dramatically,” said Alex Sugarman, Cubs senior vice president of strategy and ballpark operations. “We’re honored these elite chefs will advance those efforts with their unique culinary approaches.”
Following Izard will be food from Matthias Merges, owner of Logan Square’s Yusho Japanese Grill + Noodle House and several popular bars. Merges’ menu will be available in late June into early July, with Pork & Mindy’s chef Jeff Mauro wrapping up July.
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May 19, 2017
Leslie Patton | Bloomberg | May 16, 2017
There’s a limit to unlimited breadsticks after all.
Americans are rejecting the consistency of national restaurant chains after decades of dominance in favor of the authenticity of locally owned eateries, with their daily specials and Mom’s watercolors decorating the walls.
It’s a turning point in the history of American restaurants, according to Darren Tristano, chief insights officer at Chicago-based restaurant research firm Technomic.
“This really seems to be the dawning of the era of the independent,” Tristano said. “The independents and small chains are now outperforming. The big chains are now lagging.”
Free-marketing websites, such as Yelp Inc., have boosted the fortunes of independents in the age of McDonald’s, Cracker Barrel, Domino’s, Taco Bell, Olive Garden — the list goes on. In a shift, annual revenue for independents will grow about 5 percent through 2020, while the growth for chains will be about 3 percent, according to Pentallect Inc., an industry researcher in Chicago. Sales at the top 500 U.S. chains rose 3.6 percent last year. The gains were larger, 3.9 percent, for the whole industry, Technomic data show.
Closing Locations
It’s not that Wendy’s Baconator or the Grand Slam Slugger Breakfast from Denny’s will soon go the way of the dodo. But some national chains are feeling the pain amid dismal sales. Subway Restaurants, the biggest U.S. food chain by number of locations, saw the number of domestic outlets decline for the first time ever last year. Noodles & Co. and Red Robin Gourmet Burgers Inc. are shutting locations after failing to attract customers. Applebee’s, owned by DineEquity Inc., reported same-store sales tumbled almost 8 percent in its latest quarter, and casual-dining chain Ruby Tuesday Inc. said in March it may sell itself after a prolonged slump.
Large chains seem rooted in the American experience. But times, and tastes, are changing. Customers these days believe locals have better food, service, deals and even decor, the Pentallect report said.
Sales are reflecting that. Last year, revenue was up 20 percent at DineAmic Group in Chicago, which owns nine different restaurants.
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May 12, 2017
By Peter Frost | Crain’s | May 6, 2017
Rich Melman founded what would become the country’s biggest independent restaurant group, Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, in 1971. When it’s time, he plans to hand it over to his children, R.J., Jerrod and Molly. That time is coming.
Rich Melman wants to start taking Mondays off.
The co-founder, executive chairman and creative genius behind the nation’s largest independent restaurant group, Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, hasn’t set aside much time for himself over his 46-year career. Though he looks at least 10 years younger, Melman turned 75 in March and says he can’t stay on his feet as long as he once could. To most people his age and stature, taking an extra day off would mean staying home from the country club. But to Melman, it means reducing his schedule to a five-day workweek.
His inability to take time off is not a reflection on the state of Lettuce, which has grown to more than 7,400 employees spread across 127 restaurants in a half dozen states and $580 million in 2016 sales, and which, executives say, is in its best financial shape ever. Instead it’s a symptom of his unrelenting desire to be near a kitchen, strategizing with his partners, and an equally strong need to keep creating. As long as Melman is upright, he will have his hands in his restaurants, brainstorming menu items in his journal or padding the 50 feet from his office to Lettuce’s test kitchen in the former Jonathan Livingston Seafood in Edgewater. Restaurants are his vocation, his hobby, his passion and “all that I think about and all that I do,” Melman says. “I’m sort of not a well-rounded person.”
That singular focus has served him well since he opened R.J. Grunts in Lincoln Park in 1971 and worked his way into the country’s restaurant royalty, becoming a universally revered figure who has been showered with virtually every major award in an awards-obsessed business. He’s the Meryl Streep of hospitality, a once-in-a-generation talent who has built an unmatched restaurant empire. Talk to those inside and outside Lettuce about Melman, and they’ll describe him with words like “legend,” “pioneer,” “genius” and “mentor.”
He appreciates but swats away the praise. “I don’t want to be the biggest. I don’t want to be the richest. I don’t want to be the most well-known,” he says, sitting back in an office chair he’s parked in front of his desk. “I just want to be good at what I do. It keeps my life in balance. If you have all you need, what more could you want?”
But as he begins to inch away from his business, however slowly, Melman threatens to leave a void at Lettuce that no one person can fill. While he has ceded control of day-to-day operations to longtime Lettuce CEO Kevin Brown and their growing slate of partners, who include Melman’s three adult children, the question of Melman’s future level of involvement weighs on the company.
No one has ever worked at Lettuce without his constant supervision, counsel and dictatorial tie-breaking vote in all business matters. Both by dint of his authority and his majority ownership, he holds together an increasingly sprawling enterprise that’s split into factions of partners who lead separate divisions. He helps settle disputes and foster transparency and competition, and he has the gravitas to command the reverence of virtually everyone within the company. When Rich Melman makes a decision, others in the organization fall in line.
When Chicago’s dean of restaurants walks away from his empire for good, a new leader will emerge, and Melman is adamant that he will come from within his family. But as with all dynasties, there’s tension and uncertainty among the crew as ownership and leadership transition to the next generation. At this juncture some companies crumble. Others are paralyzed by a power struggle among the successors. Many sell out.
But Melman and Brown say Lettuce has a deep bench of strong, self-propelled leaders who are ready to take the company into a post-Rich future. They include sons R.J., 38, and Jerrod, 34, who are executive partners and serve on the Lettuce executive committee, its de facto board of directors. They also run their own division of restaurants, which includes the RPM franchise, Hub 51, Bub City, Ramen-San and Summer House Santa Monica. Their sister, Molly, 32, is a managing partner who oversees hiring and training for Lettuce restaurants.
Rich Melman gets up to rummage through a cluttered closet and pull out R.J.’s first Lettuce job application from nearly 30 years ago. His sons and Brown chuckle as he points out that the one-page form asks permission for the employer to contact the applicant’s parents. R.J., obviously, checked “yes.” It’s Melman’s way of showing how long he’s been prepping the kids.
“Rich’s DNA is all throughout the company,” says Rob Katz, co-owner of Boka Restaurant Group, who along with partner Kevin Boehm this year was a finalist for the second time for the same James Beard Foundation award for best restaurateur that Melman bagged in 2011. “Whenever you walk into a Lettuce restaurant, you’re always going to get great service and hospitality. You’re going to feel good. Rich is incredibly detail-oriented, and the second you walk in, you feel that.”
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May 5, 2017
Natalie Escobar | Chicago Magazine | May 1st, 2017
Danny Gutierrez Jr. can recall every moment of December 2, 2015. He had been sleeping on the sofa in the second-floor apartment above his family’s Pilsen restaurant Nuevo León, shortly after closing it for the night. Alone in the building, he had only slept for 15 minutes before he woke up engulfed in black smoke.
He couldn’t see his hand in front of him. “I got up from the sofa, screaming, ‘No, no, no, no, no,’” he says. He fumbled his way out of the burning 18th Street apartment in his boxers, and made it into the street where he called 911 on his cell phone. Neighbors and local business owners in the historically Mexican neighborhood gathered around and gave him a jacket, shirt, pants, and shoes until his family—father Danny Sr., mother Maria, and sisters Leticia, Marissa, and Cynthia—arrived.
The restaurant manager, upon finding out about the fire, called Nuevo León employees to let them know what happened. About 45 of them showed up and stayed with the family from midnight until six in the morning as firefighters tried to extinguish the flames. They stood and watched as the building, owned by their family for 54 years, burned to the ground. That night, father and son vowed to rebuild the restaurant.
But that may not happen anymore. Despite rumors that Nuevo León would reopen this summer, 70-year-old Danny Sr. says he is hesitant to go through with rebuilding. The family has not yet made a final decision.
Danny Jr. says the grieving process for the history-packed old restaurant has taken longer than expected. “Many people see it as a commercial restaurant, as a business. But it’s very personal,” the 45-year-old says. After the fire, they learned that rebuilding would mean months of construction. Danny Sr. was growing listless, and the former employees of Nuevo Leon, whom the Gutierrezes consider family, were beginning to move on to new jobs.
Instead, Danny Jr. came up with a different plan—a risky one that would require lots of goodwill from his staff and community. The family owns a building across the street from Nuevo León; for years, they rented it out for private parties. Danny Jr. dreamed of opening a restaurant of his own.
With Nuevo León reduced to rubble, along with much of Danny Jr.’s savings, the family needed to do something fast. So he went to his employees, many of whom had worked with him for more than a decade. “I said, ‘Listen, the business burned down,’” he explains. “‘All my personal money that I had stashed burned down. I don’t have any money to pay you. But if you’re with me, and if you help me build and finish building what I have, I promise I will give you all jobs.’”
On one Monday morning in February, Danny Sr., stands in front of a giant chopping board, squinting through narrow brown glasses as he concentrates on dicing a mountain of chicharones with a cleaver the size of his forearm. He’s been here since 6:30 a.m., and he’ll leave at 3 p.m. when his son arrives to supervise dinner service. But this isn’t Nuevo León—this is Cantón Regio, the Mexican steakhouse that Danny Jr. and his band of loyal workers built.
In a Christmas party a few weeks after the fire, all restaurant employees received $300 apiece through a GoFundMe page started by members of the community. It wasn’t an easy transition period, says server Hector Perez, 23. Along with around 20 other former Nuevo León workers—the “chosen few,” as they call themselves—he worked unpaid for a month to see what could be salvaged from the old restaurant. There wasn’t much left, says server Jhoan Camarena, 26—only silverware and plates that needed to be washed.
Much of Cantón Regio’s interior was already in place; the workers helped get the building ready to serve customers, complete with tables for dining and a fully equipped kitchen. Meanwhile, Danny Jr. worked with Alderman Danny Solis and local business owners to navigate the permit and inspection process.
Perez says he burned through his savings during this time. Neither he nor Camarena was too worried, though. Both had received job offers from other businesses around Pilsen; both turned them down because they believed Danny Jr.’s promise that he’d put them back to work.
The grand opening came and went on in mid-January 2016, with lines going out the door and all the waiters working double shifts. Finally, the money started coming in. The restaurant wasn’t turning a profit, but the workers were getting paychecks. “We started having little meetings telling us “it’s gonna be okay, we’re gonna make it up,’” Camarena says. “[He told us,] ‘All I really want is for you guys to get paid.’”
Danny Jr. says with pride, “They stood by me for 30 days.” To both father and son, this loyalty between the family and the workers has been crucial to their longevity. Several of Nuevo Leon’s 50-or-so employees had worked there for 30 years; one waitress retired in 2015 after 45 years.
Danny Sr. can even rattle off how long each server has been working with the family. He points at one server in the corner of the new restaurant: “He was a busboy, over there.” He calls out, “Valente!” and gestures for him to come over. Valente, tall with spiky black hair and a kind smile, walks over. “How old were you when you started working?” Gutierrez asks him in Spanish, to which Valente responds, “Dieciseis” (16). “And how old are you now?” Gutierrez asks. “Treinta y cuatro” (34).
On an average Sunday afternoon at Cantón Regio—prime time for families to come in for a late lunch—the smell of mesquite and hickory-smoked meat greets those who walk through the door. Groups huddle inside the entrance at 1510 West 18th Street while dodging the all-male waitstaff armed with sizzling plates of chicken, kilos of arrachera steak, and corn tortillas. The music, alternating between reggaeton and norteño beats, reduces most of the chatter to a hum, occasionally pierced by the porcelain clang of a plate falling to the floor.
Little about Cantón Regio feels like the old restaurant. A wrought-iron staircase connects two floors of tables. A high-beamed ceiling vaults up to the heavens like a church. Instead of being hidden away, a kitchen lies in plain sight. Instead of Nuevo León’s pastel pink laminated tabletops and rickety chairs, there are heavy pine tables and chairs imported from Mexico. Worn leather saddles and framed lotería cards hang from Cantón Regio’s exposed brick and canary yellow walls.
Old street signs for Sabinas Hidalgo and Monterrey hint at the decor’s inspiration: the Gutierrez family’s hometown. “The brick and the wood and the iron chandeliers and staircase, that’s all Mexico,” Danny Jr. says. “I wanted to bring back a little of what Mexico is to me, here to Chicago.”
It’s bittersweet for him. He long dreamed of running his own place, serving up Northern Mexico-style barbecue in family-style dinners. But he still remembers fondly how he used to poke holes in Nuevo León’s 50-pound flour bags and drive the cooks crazy.
“It took a while for us to move forward. It’s only been a year [since the fire], but it was a very personal blow,” Danny Jr. says, adding it took six or seven months to fully process that the old restaurant was gone.
For Danny Sr., Cantón Regio’s success and the loyalty of its staff partially feeds his reservations about rebuilding Nuevo León. His son would still be primarily running Cantón Regio, where almost half the workers from the old restaurant work; the rest of Nuevo Leon’s former employees have retired or found work elsewhere. He’s worried any new employees might not live up to the “Nuevo León way.” Danny Jr. doesn’t think that the two restaurants would compete for customers, but father and son recognize that there’s no way to know for sure.
It’s far from certain whether the reopening will happen, or when, but Danny Jr. insists the decision will be one the family makes together. For now, there are no formal plans.
He hopes that they will start rebuilding sometime in 2017. After all, the neighborhood misses the old place. His new restaurant’s menu doesn’t feature the chicken mole and enchiladas that old patrons still ask him about “a hundred times a day.”
Seeing the boarded-up old Nuevo León building pains Danny Sr., too. “It’s a tradition, you know, in Pilsen. This was the oldest restaurant in Pilsen,” he says. “When people open a restaurant and it lasts 10 years, you gotta be doing something good. When you last 20 years, you’re great. And when you last, like we did, for over 30 years, you’re a legend.”
In the meantime, though, Perez and Camarena say that they’re more than happy working at the new restaurant. They like the upscale concept, smaller menu, and bigger tips. Danny Jr. still hopes his family can bring back the old restaurant, but for now, this is enough.
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