The server would wheel a cart to the diner’s table and hold aloft, for inspection, raw cuts of beef wrapped in cellophane, a live Maine lobster crawling across its tray, gigantic specimens of Idaho potatoes and steamed asparagus that were all sold ala cart.Īrnie sold Morton’s in 1987 for $12.4 Million currently, the chain is owned by Landry’s. He developed a legendary presentation that is now considered an old-school standard.

Because, as it turned out, it was not about the size of the spread but the size of the show that mattered most. He kept the menu short and simple enough to be done by a broiler cook instead of a chef. With Klaus Fritsch as his partner, a co-worker from Playboy Enterprises, he opened Morton’s, a Chicago steakhouse – which became the flagship for the Morton’s of Chicago chain. Known as the man who “pinned the tails on the bunnies,” Morton changed strides again in the 1970s after Hugh Hefner left Chicago and moved to California. After Arnie opened his first restaurant in the 1950s, he became Hugh Hefner’s right-hand man and served as Executive Vice President of Playboy’s clubs and resorts in the 1960s. His father, Arnie Morton, was also born into a restaurant family.

Still, I have learned a lot about the company since that first T-Shirt encounter, and I know the original flagship hotel/casino better than most know their own homes.įirst, it is no accident that Peter Morton would come to be at the helm of such a profitable restaurant enterprise. I never did make it to the flagship cafe in London. But I knew it had to be cool, and the next time I was in London, I would have to stop in and get a shirt. I had no idea what this cafe was about, having never been there, and still didn’t understand it even after I asked the wearers who had been there. John’s School in Houston, Texas, and would see “ Hard Rock Cafe – London” T-shirts on a good number of my classmates. I first ran across the name on a T-Shirt in my high school in 1985. Do you remember the first time you heard the name “ Hard Rock” or saw the distinctive circular logo that could be on the hood of any American car? Depending on when you were born, it might have been because you saw the cafe on a street, the casino against the skyline, or went to Miami to see your favorite sports team play in the rebranded arena.

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