Live From Ronny’s Steak Palace, It’s…Monday Night?
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Blatter particularly liked Ronny’s Steak Palace, he says, because it was “as tacky as humanly possible.” But the restaurant, which has baked potatoes and steaks piled high at the entrance, is not without a certain bizarre charm. The main dining area just beyond the open kitchen is flanked by huge murals of famous people eating meat. The paintings were added by set designers working on the new John Hughes film Curly Sue, which used Ronny’s as a location. Among the scenes depicted in the murals are Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan consuming steak tartare and a group of Pilgrims devouring a standing rib roast.
After Ronny’s closes on Monday nights, Blatter will remove most of the chairs and tables from the main dining room and transform it into Nasty Mike’s main dance floor, with a DJ serving up progressive dance music. Up a staircase and through a doorway is a smaller, darker lounge that will become a second dance area, where a DJ will spin a mix of 60s and 70s dance classics (“Dance to the Music,” old Jackson Five favorites, etc). Blatter will use a balcony space overlooking the main dance floor as a VIP lounge. He also promises one transvestite and two female go-go dancers to spice up the ambience.
Loews Chicago Cinemas will be giving local moviegoers a taste of the unusual at the concession stand of the chain’s newest addition, Piper’s Alley Theatre, a four-screen, 1,294-seat complex hidden in the bowels of Piper’s Plaza at North and Wells. The theater is now set to open May 24 after more than a year of construction delays. Loews is stocking the refreshment stand with, among other things, yogurt, cookies, and Mr. Jubbly, a sweet popcorn imported from Europe that is lower in calories than traditional buttered popcorn. Loews has tested the popcorn in some of its New York City theaters and the yogurt and cookies in two Chicago locations, apparently with success. The stand will also stock the same Australian bottled waters that Loews offers at a few of its other theaters, in exotic flavors such as kiwi and orange-mango. “This is going to be a very upscale theater,” said a Loews executive. Even so, Loews plans to hold its top ticket price at $7. For now, anyway.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Steven D. Arazmus.
