Why Rich Melman Is Really Cooking

It's noon at Scoozi's, his popular Italian eatery in Chicago, and Richard Melman is scribbling circles and jagged lines on the sheet of white butcher's paper draped across his table. Huddled with six others over the blueprint for a gourmet fast-food court at Chicago's tony Water Tower Place shopping mall, Melman is trying to illustrate his ideas for a Chinese takeout joint his colleagues want to call Need Some Dim Sum. The circles, he explains, are woks. The lines represent a cooking surface tiered so that the customers can view the chefs stir-frying their orders. Thankfully, Melman doesn't try to draw the chefs themselves. So far, his sketch looks more like a ball of string than a place to buy dinner.

Melman, 50, is no Rembrandt, but he is an artist of sorts. Chicago's preeminent restaurateur has demonstrated an ability to spin out Windy City hot spots almost at will. His concept-laden company, Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Inc., has developed 32 restaurants with annual revenues of about $110 million. Mostly in Chicago but also in Arizona, New York, and Minnesota, their cuisines range from seafood to Italian, Greek to Spanish. Decor spans 1950s kitsch at Ed Debevic's diner to crystal and white tablecloths at the elegant Ambria. "Rich Melman is the Andrew Lloyd Webber of the restaurant industry," says food-industry consultant Ronald N. Paul of Technomic Inc. "He doesn't just produce food, he produces theater."