New York City maintains a certain lineage of restaurants worthy of the old-fashioned term “saloon.” This line began with P.J. Clarke’s, named after a turn-of-the-20th-century Irish immigrant. In the 1960s, a Clarke’s manager and maître d’, Joe Allen, opened a theater district establishment bearing his own name. A decade later, two of Mr. Allen’s bartenders founded J.G. Melon. And Melon’s, as locals call it, found someone new to uphold the tradition. It hired Bobby Torre.
Mr. Torre spent more than half a century working at Melon’s — longer than anyone else, including its two founders. He never had an ownership stake, yet he presided over the place, greeting customers, managing the staff and breaking up the occasional brawl.
He did so with egalitarian spirit, quick wit, oddball knowledge, streetwise toughness and large-heartedness.
Mr. Torre expressed himself in the way he enforced the rules. Being “firm but fair,” as he put it, meant no incomplete parties, no “joiners,” no skipping the line, and no exceptions. Asked about the wait, he often said, “Forty minutes, with connections.”
Mr. Torre manned the door at J. G. Melon’s for decades and was “firm but fair,” as he put it.Credit…Shravya Kag for The New York Times
At Third Avenue and 74th Street, J.G. Melon is a fixture on Manhattan’swealthy Upper East Side, where connectedness abounds. But Mr. Torre did not hesitate to send Grace Kelly, Michael Bloomberg and countless others to the jukebox or the sidewalk to wait their turn.