Lawry's crosses the road to get back 'home' again…

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan 13, 1992 by Richard Martin

Let's update an old riddle: Why did the prime rib cross the road?

No, "To lay it on the line" is a punch line to the chicken joke.

Actually, Lawry's The Prime Rib in Beverly Hills, Calif., is preparing to cross La Cienega Boulevard because the 53-year-old restaurant remains, well, so darned successful.

It is so successful, in fact, that the history-making institution is spending $8 million during a recession to disprove the old adage "You can't go home again."

Los Angeles-based Lawry's Restaurants Inc. has broken ground across the street from its 285-seat flagship in order to build a new, 400-seat home on land owned by the company. The relocation site happens to be the very same spot where the single-entree landmark was inaugurated in 1938 and operated until 1946, when it outgrew those premises and leased its current, soon-to-be-vacated address.

"We're essentially moving home," said Richard N. Frank, president and chief executive of Lawry's and son of its co-founder, Lawrence Frank.

Plans call for the move to be made by December, amid fanfare that will include a street-crossing procession of the domed, 600-pound stainless-steel carts from which the restaurant's dry-aged, rock-salt-roasted beef specialty is carved at tableside.

The third incarnation of the original Lawry's The Prime Rib, which has spawned branches in Chicago and Dallas, promises to be a very special home. In addition to a two-level subterranean parking lot for 200 cars, the expanded operation will boast 115 new seats and a careful re-creation of the establishment's posh, Edwardian design signatures.

"It's still going to have three steps down into the dining room, 18- to 20-foot ceilings, high-back chairs and big booths," explained Bryan Monfort, the restaurant's general manager. What's more, the relocated Lawry's will break new ground by having banquet rooms and a redesigned kitchen capable of preparing dishes other than prime rib for private parties.

Regular guests will still be offered only the traditional house-specialty cuts of beef as well as the restaurant's 16-ounce baked potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, creamed spinach, "spinning salad bowl" and other elaborate service sideshows. Despite the relocation, there was little chance that Lawry's would tamper with a menu format that has helped the company grow into a $23 million-a-year business, including the sales at its three prime-rib restaurants and two other Los Angeles operations, the Tam O'Shanter Inn and Five Crowns.

After all, Lawry's occupies a special niche in the nation's foodservice history. By all accounts, the La Cienega flagship was the first restaurant in America to serve but one entree item and was the first to feature a green salad before the entree. Reputedly, it was also the first restaurant to offer "doggie" bags, the first to employ parking valets and the first in which servers identified themselves by name.

It won't, however, be the first restaurant forced to install an expensive bus turntable to accommodate the, yes, busloads of visitors who regularly journey to Lawry's (including, by longstanding New Year's Eve tradition, the rival Rose Bowl teams).

A mecca for hungry tour groups on Beverly Hills sojourns, Lawry's was recently allowed to delete the bus-turntable requirement from its construction plan after physically demonstrating to the Beverly Hills City Council that buses had time between traffic lights to back out from the relocation site onto busy La Cienega Bouelvard.

The original Lawry's is a favorite with tourists, especially beef-worshiping Japanese visitors who gasp at the comparatively paltry $17.95-to-$24.95 entree prices. But management's steadfast respect for its local, repeat clientele has helped enable the restaurant to routinely post a 5-percent annual sales growth and weather a few years when diners were shying away from beef consumption.

"The last four years have been the best in our history," Monfort said. Although customer counts dipped somewhat in the mid-'80s, Lawry's enjoyed a "tremendous increase" in covers during 1988 and has witnessed steady traffic ever since. "We hear a lot of people say, "I'm eating less beef, but when I want it, I'm coming to Lawry's,'" Monfort explained.

He is confident that the planned return of the Lawry's flaship to its original location won't alienate regular customers. They'll keep coming, he said, because "they know what they are going to get. We stand out; we're so different. We're focused on one thing and one thing only."