No Morton’s Tonight? (Relax, It’s Temporary) : Industry: For years, entertainment’s movers and shakers have gathered at the exclusive enclave, with Mondays drawing the elite.
It’s Monday night. Marvin Davis is sitting at his usual, big round table just inside the entrance, where he and his wife, Barbara, are entertaining Sidney Poitier. Good pals Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg and media mogul David Geffen are at the prime table against the window chatting it up. Michael J. Fox and CAA agent Brian Lord are in the northeast corner talking movies. And independent producer Steve Tisch is table hopping, as he always does, working the room between bites.
But wait. Where will they be tonight when Morton’s is dark? Or next week? Morton’s won’t reopen for another two Mondays.
The pink, dimly lit West Hollywood eatery on the southwest corner of Melrose Avenue and Robertson Boulevard, is closing--and reopening right across the street on Jan. 18. Since debuting 14 years ago, Morton’s has become the exclusive dinner-only enclave of the entertainment industry’s movers and shakers--especially on Monday nights, when Hollywood’s most powerful elite appropriated the best tables. Now, with a bigger building and more parking slots, it’s expanding for lunch .
In a fickle business and tenuous economy, the $2-million move might worry some proprietors, particularly since people are generally averse to any kind of change.
Peter Morton? Never. The restaurant’s owner, 46, who thrives on competition and risk, is not only taking over on the site of the once-hot lunch spot, Trumps, he’s taking on the Ivy, Cicada, Citrus, the Grill and the Palm for the Hollywood heavyweight lunch crowd.
Besides, Morton is preoccupied with a much bigger risk, the $85-million Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, spawned from his successful Hard Rock Cafe chain.
Why, then? “This building was in need of repair. In certain ways, I thought the food was in need of repair. It was just time to update the whole thing without altering dramatically the philosophy of the restaurant: clean, healthy food in a simple environment,” Morton said in his characteristically laconic manner, eating a plateful of vegetables and sipping “room temperature” Evian water on the last Monday night at the original site.
There will be a new chef with new dishes, an expanded bar that serves pizza, and new prime tables to jockey for.
Much, he promises, will be familiar, like the subdued lighting and the strategically placed towering potted palms. Whether the special ambience survives is the bigger question. The critical issue is to keep Morton’s as a sanctuary--a sophisticated, protected, rendezvous place where everyone knows your name and may gossip about you later--where looky-loos aren’t a welcome part of the scene.
As Tisch said, high prices and no bar scene (Morton wants diners, not drinkers) has effectively discouraged “tourists from Wisconsin from coming in after the Rose Bowl.”
“Studio commissary for dinner” . . . “Chasen’s for our generation” . . . “A clubhouse for the big boys” . . . are three descriptions offered by some regulars, the latter who may have had a temporary lapse in judgment by not remembering certain notable patron esses more powerful than he, like Paramount Pictures chairman Sherry Lansing. On any given night, she might be in the company of 20th Century Fox’s chairman Peter Chernin, producer Leonard Goldberg, CAA chief Michael Ovitz and author Jackie Collins. Bill Clinton’s had a meal (as governor of Arkansas) and Rep. Joseph Kennedy III (D-Mass.) has just recently phoned ahead for a reservation two weeks hence.
Morton’s may have been immortalized with the catch tag line “See you Monday night at Morton’s” in Celia Brady’s industry column in Spy, but those who’ve always dined there needn’t be reminded in print. They know who they are.
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The faithful core came from the get-go, knowing Morton from London, where he opened the first Hard Rock, which attracted such future investors in his restaurants as Tisch, Steven Spielberg and Barry Diller. While the Hard Rock formula attracts youthful masses to stand in line for hamburgers and loud rock music, Morton’s is just the reverse. It has two reservation lines--one private for the inner-inner circle, the other for the public. The regulars are billed via the mail. And, of course, there is the table hierarchy, which Morton dismisses, claiming the food is the same no matter at which of the 25 spots one sits.
For Howard Rosenman, president of Brillstein-Grey Entertainment’s film division and another close friend of the owner, Morton’s is a kitchen away from home. “Peter carried my dinner debts during the dry years,” he said.
The new Morton’s, as with the old, has the buffer zone of a parking lot between the front door and the sidewalk, to keep at bay the paparazzi who regularly stake out stars at Spago, Le Dome, Chasen’s and Nicky Blairs. Also, there’s a no-camera policy inside--always.
But just imagine the photos that could have been taken over the years. Sean Connery returning from the parking lot to break up a fight. A middle-aged actress, whose wig was horribly askew--and nobody clued her. The bride-for-hire who stripped naked at a bachelor party. Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin’s first date. (She was 45 minutes late.)
Juicy Stories, by the way, Morton himself would never tell: “I respect people’s privacy and I always have since we’ve been open.”
But Morton is comparatively effusive about the new digs. The chef, sought after for six months from Jeremiah Tower’s famous Stars in San Francisco, is Brian Keller, hired to redefine the “California” cuisine that Morton said his restaurant offered before the moniker was coined. The main menu will feature foods Morton himself likes to eat: pasta, salads, vegetarian specialties. “The Bacon,” as in the large Francis Bacon painting, will again hang in the main dining area.
Will his friends all return? Probably. Maybe even the once-banned Julia Phillips, whose damning Hollywood tome “You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again” depicted certain Morton’s regulars in very unflattering light. Likely, you won’t see Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger--investors in the movie-themed Planet Hollywood chain that Morton is suing for, among other things, devaluing the Hard Rock by imitation.
Jack Martin, the bartender who’s been with Morton’s since the day it opened, will also be there, serving them up, from memory: Geffen’s mineral water, Katzenberg’s ice tea, Revlon chairman Ronald Perelman’s Smirnoff on the rocks with a slice of orange, Jack Nicholson’s Bloody Marys--”not necessarily strong, but spicy.”
Martin--like several other of Morton’s 50 employees--has received his share of hefty tips ($100 and multiples) over the years.
“It’s a good gig . . . a really good gig.”
