‘Being observant is critical in this business’

MICHAEL Morton was 11 or 12 years old when he began washing dishes at one of his father’s restaurants. “Washing dishes, mopping floors, I worked a buffet,” he says of the various jobs of his youth.

Morton’s father, Arnie, who died in 2005 at age 83, was a food and beverage industry legend. A third-generation restaurateur, he helped Hugh Hefner launch the Playboy Club in 1960 and later founded the Morton’s of Chicago chain.

“I can’t say he was the most balanced guy,” his son recalls of his father’s drive. “He lived for the restaurant business. We talked it. We lived it. We worked it. It was just our life.”

Michael, 53, has carried on the family business. He was a founding partner in the N9NE Group (which briefly partnered with Playboy at the Palms) and currently runs a restaurant empire that includes Crush at MGM Grand, La Cave at Wynn Las Vegas, downtown’s La Comida and MB Steak at the Hard Rock Hotel (co-owned with his brother David). He still relies on what his father taught him.

“He used to say the business is 90 percent common sense, 10 percent a good eye,” Morton says, “and that’s still something that I preach all the time.”

Asked to elaborate on that “good eye,” he explains: “Whether it was setting up the room, or just the slight shift of a customer’s head that was looking to get somebody’s attention, being observant is critical in this business.”

Michael Morton Michael Morton and Arnie Morton at Morton’s of Chicago in the early 1980s.