On Sunday, after the Design for Change exhibition opening at the Chicago History Museum, my wife Kathy and I, nephew Ira S. Murfin—the last Bohemian—the estimable Emmy Bean and their 8 year old son Floyd moved on up Clark Street for a lunch at the now venerable R.J. Grunts. Opened 53 years ago the place has barely changed and is still busy on a glorious weekend afternoon.
Grunt’s was the first venture you young restaurant entrepreneur Rich Melman and launched his fabulously successful Lettuce Entertain You empire. He was said to have revolutionized the hospitality business in Chicago and nation-wide. He introduced themed casual eateries with catchy names and modestly upscaled menus and has gone on to hoity-toity upscale places with celebrity chefs and clientele. At Grunt’s he introduced the first-ever salad bar and what became known as pub burgers.
Of course, hiring attractive waitresses was hardly a new idea. Cocktail waitresses in nightclubs were iconic, as were the Bunnies, silken bustiers and tail up at Hugh Hefner’s thriving Playboy Club. But the lovelies Melman hired and immortalized on his walls were not presented as overt temptresses but as remarkably wholesome and approachable without having to hide a wallet.
They came from Chicago working class neighborhoods, as girls fleeing suburban monotony, college drop-outs or part-time students, and fresh from small towns and farms. All had dreams and R.J. Grunt’s seemed as good a place to start as any.
I knew a couple of them fairly well—actresses hoping to break into the burgeoning local theater scene and encountered others.
They gained a dose of notoriety when now disgraced columnist Bob Greene co-created Bagtime, a Chicago Sun-Times fictional story series about an aging bag boy at Treasure Island Foods on Wells Street grieving over his divorce from a hot young thing who was a waitress at R.J. Grunts and was caught in an orgy with the Chicago Bear line. I guess they may have fueled other fantasies as well in addition to real lives in the post-pill era of sexual liberation.
Pictures at R.J. Grunts
May 21, 2024
Maybe it was the nostalgia in the sparkling spring air—
after a morning revisiting a slice of my youth
it seemed an apt choice and just up the street
from the museum.
R.J. Grunts hit the time target, 1971, to be precise
and was hippie-dippied in a dark wood cavern
cluttered with tables and catch as catch can chairs
aping the popular pub joints on Rush Street and
Lincoln Avenue.
But it was hardly revolutionary or radical except maybe
in the Chicago restaurant biz—
prime example of Hip Capitalism at its most triumphant.
Waiting for a table on a very busy afternoon
our eyes—the four grownups and a nephew—
adjusted to the dim interior
which had hardly changed at all in 53 years
except the old permanent blue haze of smoke
had lifted.
I studied the wall by the tiny restrooms opposite the bar
which was covered by 8x10 framed photos
of smiling vibrant young women and more
lined every wall in the dining room.
Back in the day Rich Melman picked each server for pulchritude
and waitressing at a hot, busy joint was a good way
for young women to launch themselves into the world
and maybe bide time until a career as an actress, singer, or artist.
And they took their pictures to hang on the walls,
years and years of new pictures until the walls were filled
sparkling with hope with dreams and cheerful open smiles
as if they would never be groped by drunks
or followed disastrously home on a dark night
shining alike no matter how varied in hairstyle or costume.
The ones here, by the bar, are probably the oldest,
those chicks, they called them,
now grandmothers even great-grandmothers.
How brave of them
how worthy of a moments veneration
before our table to five is finally called.
—Patrick Murfin
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