Memphis eatery’s famed waiters to retire
In 1963, Robert Newman showed up at the Rendezvous.
He liked the thick ham-andcheese sandwiches they served back then. Everybody did. “They were like this,” said Newman, holding his thumb and forefinger 6 inches apart. “I was working at the William Len Hotel. I went down, I think it was on a Saturday night, and Mr. Charlie, Charlie Vergos, asked me if I wanted to work for him. That’s how it began.”
In 1969, Percy Norris showed up at the Rendezvous. He had a buddy who worked at the place. He used to pick up his buddy at night.
“I was working at a truck line at the time, loading and unloading trucks,” Norris said. “I always wanted to be a waiter, because you got a chance to dress sharply every day. Finally, one of the guys that was a bartender at the Rendezvous, his name was Catfish, he didn’t show up for work one day. Mr. Charlie called me and I got a job and things just took off.”
Robert Newman — Big Robert — has been at the restaurant for 53 years.
Percy Norris — everybody knows him as Percy — has been at the restaurant for 48.
That’s more than 100 years serving up ribs and shoulder and hospitality.
That’s more than 100 years in an industry defined by turnover and churn.
And at the end of this year, Big Robert and Percy will hang up their bow ties and see what life after the Rendezvous is like.
Said Percy, 68: “I gotta give it up. It’s been a long haul, 48 years.”
Said Big Robert, 71: “I have to. I just got out of the hospital, but I’m not ready to go.”
Memphians know Big Robert and Percy nearly as well as the restaurant itself.
“These guys who are retiring, they are probably as much a part of the Rendezvous as the ribs, and my family, and everything else about it,” said John Vergos, one of the restaurant’s owners. “Certain people won’t come down here if they can’t get a certain waiter, if they can’t get Percy or Robert.
“They’ve fed four generations of people. They’ve lived through and they’ve seen a lot of things.”
When John’s father, Charlie Vergos, opened the Rendezvous in 1948, he served sandwiches, not barbecue, and a converted coal chute in the basement became a smoker first for hams and eventually ribs.
Once Vergos blended Greek seasoning with Creole spices, he created the dry rub that would make his ribs famous.
Nearly 70 years later, celebrities such as the Rolling Stones, Harry Caray, Mario Batali, Jerry Seinfeld and, more recently, members of the British royal family, still flock to the barbecue restaurant located in an alley across the street from The Peabody Hotel.