Restaurant’s final days: Tours, take-home, tchotchkes on sale
Lawry’s the Prime Rib closing doors after 46 years
It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
WhenLawry’s the Prime Rib announced in late September that it was leaving itsMagnificent Mile home, where it has served prime rib for 46 years, the reaction by longtime customers was immediate, and heartening.
“After we announced, the phones rang incessantly,” said sales and marketing manager Shannon Tauschman. “We were booked 100% through the end of the year.”
But then came late October, when, amid a coronavirus surge, Gov. J.B. Pritzker banned indoor dining throughout the state, the second such ban of 2020.
No Thanksgiving dinners. No holiday gatherings. No New Year’s Eve. And for Lawry’s the Prime Rib, no final farewell.
“It would have been great to do one big last hurrah,” Tauschman said. “Itwould have been fantastic. We wanted to have a huge 1930s-musical party, do a balloon drop, get a band.”
Instead, there is silence. The holiday decorations, which in years past made Lawry’s a destination in November and December, were never hung. The dining room tables are still draped in linen, and the gleaming silver serving carts, on which the restaurant’s prime ribs were carved tableside, stand ready for diners who aren’t coming.
“Someone came by for pickup and said it was weird to be in the building. The dining room actually looks lost,” Tauschman said. “You feel like you’re playing hooky standing there.”
Customers still stop by for carryout, however. “We’ve become masters at to-go,” Tauschman said. Business, such as it’s allowed to be, is booming; Lawry’s logged more than 152 pickup orders for Christmas Eve, and 75 for the day before that.
Tauschman continues to conduct private tours of the building. The property is an architectural dream — or nightmare — an 1893 mansion thatwas later enclosed by a 1947 addition. Later work, in 1985, was necessitated by construction damage from an adjacent building.
“It’s a real wacky building,” she said. “I’m no engineer or architect, but wow, whocameupwith this idea, building a facade around a mansion and keeping the mansion buried in the middle? A lot of people who dined here for years have no idea whatwas upstairs.”
The tours used to include a bit of eating and
drinking along the way; now the food and wine are lovely parting gifts. Surprisingly, Tauschman said, eliminating the food and beverage hasn’t made the tours go any faster.
“(The tours) seemto take the same amount of time,” she said. “I think because people are asking a lot of questions.”
Customers also have been asking about purchasing restaurant items, and Tauschman said practically everything is for sale. The serving carts and chandeliers will be returned to the company’s California headquarters, but the wine and liquor inventory is being liquidated. One customer bought “a lot” of the Christmaswreaths, andis stopping by next month for the trees.
“We’re even selling the tea aprons and little hats the servers used to wear,” she said. “One guywants to buy some booths. Somebody inquired about buying the staircase, but it’s a lot of plaster. It’s kinda great that people want to have a memento.”
The restaurant must vacate the premises by the end of January; that last
month will be “aweird time to be in the building,” Tauschman said.
Lawry’s hasn’t ruled out returning to Chicago someday.
“I think the family (Lawry’s Restaurants Inc.) would love to come back,” Tauschman said. “Chicago has been very good to them. But I think it’ll be a couple of years.”
In the meantime, Lawry’s Restaurants offers Lawry’s At Home, which will deliver prime rib dinners — including Yorkshire pudding, creamed spinach, creamed corn and mashed potatoes, plus seasonings, recipe cards and the dressing needed to make the restaurant’s spinning salad (spinning resultsmay vary). Dinners can be shipped nationwide, ordered via lawrysathome.com.
And as for Tauschman herself?
“My husband asked me that,” she said. “‘Will you be getting a job?’ I’m not sure. I’ve been here for 14 years, and I’m still a rookie compared to most of our staff.”