Ralph Lauren Making Entree Into Restaurant Business

In what may be the ultimate in conspicuous consumption, upscale American designer Ralph Lauren is making a play for consumer taste buds with the opening of his first restaurant, named RL.

Polo Ralph Lauren Corp., whose brands can be found on everything from underwear and polo shirts to paint, opened the 86-seat dining room that adjoins his sprawling 35,000-square-foot retail store on Chicago’s shopping mecca, Michigan Avenue.

The designer’s signature moneyed, clubby style is evident in the restaurant, which features Oriental carpets, club chairs covered in cracked leather, a working fireplace and bookcases stuffed with art and travel books.

Although the mahogany-paneled dining room is more reminiscent of an industrial tycoon’s library than a restaurant, RL’s management does not want diners to be intimidated by the swank surroundings.

“The most important thing about this restaurant is that this is a friendly place where people feel very comfortable,” said Scott Dahlin, RL’s general manager. “We don’t want people to be overwhelmed by the atmosphere.”

At RL, patrons can dine on the designer’s favorite dish, veal Milanese, or eat steaks that come from organically fed cattle that grazed on Lauren’s private ranch in Colorado. The restaurant serves both lunch and dinner.

The mostly Italian menu seems incongruous with the classic American-style dining room, but Italian food was selected because “it’s Ralph’s favorite and that is the type of food he wanted,” Dahlin said.

Dahlin said the restaurant draws some traffic from the store, but many patrons come from the surrounding high-rent Gold Coast neighborhood or drive in from the suburbs on weekend nights.

Andrew Barish, an analyst at BancBoston Robertson Stephens who tracks the restaurant industry, said RL’s success would more likely depend on the quality of the food and the diners’ experience than its association with the tony designer and the expensive products he sells.

“It gets down to the quality of the food and the consistency of the execution of the restaurant,” Barish said. “You need to be able to provide a consistent experience at a reasonable value.”

Chicago food critics have given good marks to both the menu and the service at RL.

But image is important at the restaurant, where the staff wears Ralph Lauren shirts and ties and the managers and hosts sport outfits by the designer.

Some industry analysts question the wisdom of Lauren’s move into the restaurant business because it’s an industry fraught with a high rate of failure, while others said it was a novel idea that might succeed.

“The tie-in between the restaurant and the Ralph Lauren clothing and all the other things is a novel idea, and there is nothing wrong with novel concepts in the restaurant business,” said Lloyd Gordon, a restaurant consultant with Skokie, Ill.-based GEC Consultants Inc. “You can be a pioneer.”

A spokeswoman at Ralph Lauren said there are no immediate plans to open other RL restaurants, but said the success of the Chicago restaurant could mean other RL venues.

The food at RL is pricey just like the designer’s clothes. Lunch entrees range from $13 for pasta to $23 for broiled snapper, while dinner entrees range from $23 for salmon to $32 for lamb chops.