Thursday, September 3, 2009
Chicagoland / Food Chain / Food & Drink Hyde Park's oddest restaurant for (odd) lease
Posted by Whet Moser on 09.03.09 at 12:30 PM
Hyde Park Progress brings news that Orly's is up for lease - $75k working capital brings you "complete autonomy" and 90% of the profits over the course of the lease.
I don't know much about the restaurant business, so I don't know whether it's a good deal, but the location's not bad - 55th and Hyde Park, on the #55 and #6 lines in a fairly dense part of the area. But as a resident of Hyde Park/Woodlawn for half the time I've been in Chicago, Orly's has long fascinated and amused me.
I've only eaten there once (it was okay, not great). Most of the people I know from Hyde Park, which is most of the people I know in Chicago, have only eaten there once or twice. It's been through three or four different cuisine incarnations since I've lived here, with two or three different names.
Hyde Park Progress has an earlier post which counts up seven or eight, depending on how you figure it, different concepts in the restaurant's history: proto-Applebees; Mexican, Japanese, Italian, Polynesian and Israeli (!); salad/stir-fry bars; Southwestern; Southwestern under the name "Jalapeno's"; Southwestern back under the name Orly's; bakery; bakery and barbeque.
I think they might be missing a Cajun incarnation in between Southwestern Orly's and bakery Orly's, but honestly I can't remember.
Anyway, tell your ambitious restaurateur friends. Although what Hyde Park really needs is the return of Ciral's House of Tiki.
Comments (6)
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NINETY PERCENT PROFIT?????
Sounds like thats the reason no one has survived that location!
Some one please tell me it is not yet another property of UofC.
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Gah, Hyde Park Progress. I forgot those fools existed. The snipping of the rich elite that ruin everything about Hyde Park, whining about the failure to pay Walsh billions to tear up the Point, and howling that HP lacks a Gap. Between these losers, the disinterested students, and the old radical leftists that make up the loyal opposition, HP truly is doomed.
LIC: if it was a U of C property, it would have been torn down by now. And, HPP would throw up a snarky tirade dancing on its grave, with a personal attack on Jack Spicer or the Medici guy thrown in for good measure.
Why did you have to make me sad by bringing up Tiki? The B-Bus was aptly named back in the day, since it went up Cornell past the Cove, Falcon and Tiki (and a couple of corner stores that doubled as packies).
Despite yr bringing up the well-described in the other comments and ridiculous "Hyde Park Progress," you've got Orly's down (tho there was also the "Come to our restaurant or I'll shoot this waitress!" ad campaign that the nutty owner David Shopiro [sic] ran some years ago). And you are soooooo right about needing a return of Tiki Ted's!
Orly's is one of the few times I've ever sat down, gotten water, and gotten back up and left. We went there after biking the lakefront, thinking from the outside decor that my son could get a bagel or a sandwich or something. Yet once we were inside it seemed like our only midday choice was an immensely heavy barbecue dinner (of the roast greasy ribs in lots of sweet sauce sort). The biking gave me an excuse to say, sorry, not what we thought it would be or want right now, and get back out, because it was just one of those places that radiated failure and despair from every pore, like the restaurant in the Bunuel film where it turns out the owner has just died and is laying under a tablecloth a few tables away.
