Sometimes a single name says it all.
So, say nothing more than the name “Gordon” and the dining public immediately envisions, as it has for two decades, a restaurant with lively decor and well-prepared contemporary fare that provides one of the city’s best dining experiences.
The name also evokes the image of Gordon Sinclair, the restaurant’s owner.
At first glance, there’s more than a hint of the dapper, debonair Fred Astaire, comfortable in the company of beautiful women, at ease with socialites and captains of commerce. But there are other facets. There’s Gordon the bellwether, keeping his menu on the cutting edge of American cooking for two decades; Gordon the quipster, a sure source of lively quotations; Gordon the eccentric, postponing an opening for four days because his psychic told him to do so.
He also has retained a three-star (of four) rating for the restaurant through a succession of chefs with distinctly different styles and strengths.
“Chef-owners sometimes become self-absorbed and forget about the front of the house,” comments Carolyn Walkup, correspondent for Nation’s Restaurant News. “Gordon never forgets his customers. That’s a key to his longevity.”
Never one for false modesty, Gordon Sinclair would not disagree. As he quipped last Thursday at a banquet honoring the 20th anniversary of his restaurant: “After 20 years I’m no longer going to be envious of people I know I’m superior to.”
At the beginning of his seventh decade, lean as a whippet and keenly aware of the world about him, he took an hour recently to look backward and forward.
The restaurateur, who has been described as “charming with a wonderful curiosity,” “charismatic, with an impeccable, innate sense of style,” as well as “idiosyncratic,” “impatient,” “vague,” “too particular” and occasionally “very rude,” draped himself along a couch.
Sipping tea, he explained he was slightly malade with the onset of what might be a head cold, and sleep-deprived due to a pair of late evenings spent socializing with a quintet of celebrity chefs who had come to Gordon to prepare a benefit dinner.
Nonetheless he was able to fire off several of the quips more numerous than one would imagine possible from a restaurateur who never talks with his mouth full.
On his boyhood in industrial Flint, Mich.: “I’m proud to be an example of someone able to rise above his environment.”
On the martini: “Drinking gin on the rocks and calling it a martini is boozing, not cocktailing. When it’s made properly, two parts gin to one part vermouth, it’s an attractive, elegant drink.”
On cigar smokers: “If last year was the year of getting away with murder, this is the year of getting away with arrogance. Someone proudly puffing away with no regard to others is pure selfishness, an indulgence of wealth.”
Gordon, which opened on July 27, 1976, at 512 N. Clark St., several doors north of its present location on the corner of Clark and Illinois, has provided one of the best vantage points for observing Chicago’s transition from a tough-talking town garbed in a sweatshirt to a well-spoken, well-dressed international travel destination.
The original location was, Sinclair says, “a dump with a dirty bookstore on one side and a currency exchange on the other.” Now the block sports several restaurants.
Sinclair is not entirely content, though. Having your name in lights comes with a price.
“From the vantage point of 20 years,” he muses, “I would say it has been a burden. There’s a lot of pressure for me to be on the scene whenever we are open. People ask, `Where’s Gordon?’ “
Some ask as well, what does Gordon do?
To the public his contribution is obvious. Almost nightly he sweeps through the restaurant, vivacious and charming as he greets old customers and new. His stylish garb, his energy, his high spirits are infectious. But as suddenly as he appears, he disappears.
Behind the scenes, according to former chef Cory Schreiber, who is on good terms with his former boss, his role is more ambiguous.
“He’s an imagemaker with great people skills,” the chef says, “but at a culinary school he would have to teach theory. He couldn’t teach practical application.”
“I’m not an operations guy,” Sinclair acknowledges.
From the beginning, the restaurant’s ambiance was heightened by outrageous and affecting design elements and its menu by ahead-of-the-wave creations.
“We were the first restaurant in the city to have cold pasta salad on our lunch menu. Did we do it because we were smart? No. We didn’t have a deep fryer, so we couldn’t make french fries.
Abandoning a career in public relations, which had taken him to New York and then Chicago, Sinclair decided to venture into the restaurant game. He persuaded Gene Sage, a real pro, to give him a training course by allowing him to serve in and run a dining room. He felt comfortable immediately.
“I liked wearing the tuxedo and orchestrating the evenings,” Sinclair said later.
He embraced the new American cuisine and healthy eating, visited cutting-edge chefs in other cities, helped found and was first president of the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Wine & Food. In a short time, as his restaurant garnered awards, he became a full-fledged member of the American food establishment, a first-name pal of Julia Child, Wolfgang Puck and Alice Waters.
But the aspect of Gordon the restaurant most chewed over within the industry is his revolving-door policy regarding head chefs. In 20 years he has employed 14 of them.
“I’ve enjoyed working with most of them,” he says. “Only a few times has it been a case of the wrong man in the wrong place.”
Nonetheless, he has not offered a partnership or other inducement to keep any of them. Some speculate he enjoys the furor change brings. Long-absent customers and critics return. Indeed, over the past two decades, it is virtually certain that no Chicago restaurant has been reviewed more frequently than Gordon.
“I think he helps (the chefs) more than they help him,” says Dan Roberts, who was Gordon’s publicist for many years. “Working for Gordon has become a springboard. He provides visibility and credibility so when they don’t get more money or a partnership, or want to open a place of their own, it’s easy for them to move on.”
None of this has stopped Sinclair from worrying about the industry and the relationship between restaurateurs and customers.
“For the past three years or so, people have been re-evaluating their attitude toward fine dining,” he reflects. “Fewer people want it, so the pie is smaller. But the pie is being cut in many more pieces because there are so many more restaurants.”
Not that he stood still. Gordon’s private dining rooms have been refurbished. He plans to move the restaurant’s entrance around the corner to Illinois Street, then enlarge the bar area and use it for music, dancing and “soft” seating.
More than a few Sinclair projects have failed to come to fruition, among them a market and cafe with a Caribbean theme and a southwest casual restaurant he intended to call Ukiah. Satellite restaurants in Lake Forest and Jupiter, Fla., closed after several years. But only one project failed.
That was Cafe Gordon, launched in 1994 in the Tremont Hotel space occupied for many years by Crickets and closed this past summer.
“I was spread too thin. That hurt,” Sinclair acknowledges. “Also, after 20 years, I lacked the energy for it.
Sinclair won friends throughout the industry when he took the lead in a national campaign to charge a fee to no-shows and educate consumers about the “pain and suffering” caused by not honoring reservations. He currently is involved in developing a national restaurant reservation network.
What does the future hold?
“I would like to step back and have Gordon owned by the chef and a management team. I would like to stretch my time at my farm (in Harvard), work from there and function more as a consultant.”
For the time being, however, he remains closely tied to the restaurant, overseeing the installation of a new general manager, Joe Conan, and a new chef. The chef is Don Yamauchi, a highly praised young craftsman who won national attention while directing the kitchen at Carlos in Highland Park.
