An older man, looking dapper with his slicked-back white locks and silk pocket square, sat at a table directly in front of the bench and gazed on with deep, unwavering reverence.
The piano player, a woman appearing to be in her 60s with a dark shag haircut and sequined blouse, was at her post, banging away a pleasant but unrecognizable tune. My partner Emily and I made our way to the bar, weaving past a few 30-something couples bent over shared shrimp cocktails and businessmen with loosened ties gripping glasses of whiskey. Inside, strangers laugh and chat with each other, sharing their stories with the kind of ease often reserved for actual airport bars.Ī recent Tuesday evening found the restaurant a little less than half full. A few years ago the waitresses - yes, the servers are exclusively women, as far as I can tell - successfully lobbied for the right to wear skirts over their bikini-cut leotards.
The place got a makeover in 1991, ever-so-slightly sprucing up the decor and converting the backroom from a burlesque-driven speakeasy into a private dining room. My initial memory is dark wood, lots of red and women dressed up.” After a beat she added, “Long legged women.” When I asked my mother, a former healthcare executive who frequently traveled to Chicago on business throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, if she remembered the Gaslight Club at O’Hare, I got an immediate affirmative. The O’Hare outpost, the empire’s lone survivor, has been chugging steadily along since 1973. Four called the Chicagoland area home, including a location in the tony Palmer House hotel and another in East Dundee. Browne’s concept spread like wildfire, eventually spanning 26,000 members across 13 different Gaslight Clubs in places as far reaching as Paris, Los Angeles, New York and Miami. 1960) and, in some ways, the strip-mall breastaurants that proliferated in the 1980s and ‘90s. It was a looky-no-touchy gentleman’s club, paving the way for Hugh Heffner’s Chicago-based Playboy Club (est. Guests even needed a special gold-plated key to gain entry, spurring a brief but significant “Key Club” craze as similar outfits popped up across mid-century America. Against the far wall, a middle-aged bartender sporting a shock of blonde curls and a fringy black leotard presides warmly over a compact five-seat bar. A Baby Grand perches near the back, crowned by a large black-and-white photograph of an elderly gent engulfed by a sea of scantily clad showgirls. The textured wallpaper, deep maroon and emblazoned with a gold paisley pattern, stretches up to the heavens, forming a fitting backdrop to a handful of towering Botticelli-style nudes encased in thick gilded frames. That hallway eventually empties into the great room, where two-tops and four-tops dressed in crisp white tablecloths cluster beneath a truly gargantuan crystal chandelier. Sneak past the sign and approach a dimly lit host stand, then follow the maître d’ down a hallway lined with intimate leather booths and built-in bookshelves. Steakhouses reign supreme, from the Loop’s tourist traps and cheffy Fulton Market newcomers to Old Town throwbacks and the glitzy eateries dotting the Gold Coast’s “Viagra Triangle,” the Rust Street hub where men of a certain age canoodle with much younger dining companions over dry-aged Tomahawks.īut if there’s a place a Chicagoan would never expect to find one of the country’s most storied and, at one point, most exclusive chop shops, it’s probably O’Hare International Airport.Įnter the Hilton Chicago O’Hare Airport via the elevators off of Terminal 2, swing a right, head past the sprawling front desk and you’ll encounter an oversized mirror announcing “Gaslight Club: Elegant Dining & Entertainment” in illuminated, Gatsby-era lettering. Chicago is undoubtedly a meat-and-potatoes town.
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