Bob Payton: 1944-1994
Bob Payton died last Wednesday, shortly after his 50th birthday.
His death marks the end of a 17-year history of enterprise, backed by a capacity for detailed, painstaking research and the creation of popular and enduring menu items.
In particular, he was responsible for introducing the restaurant brands Chicago Pizza Pie Factory, Chicago Rib Shack and Henry J Bean's Bar and Grill.
The crusty, deep-dish style of pizza and spare-rib recipes, which he imported from his beloved Chicago, the onion loaf and deep-fried potato skins became, and remain, indelible signatures of the restaurants. They were not original and owed much to the inspiration of restaurateur Rich Melman, president of Lettuce Entertain You, in Chicago. But the passion for detail and the ability to make them a permanent part of the British, and subsequently the European restaurant scene, proved a greater virtue than mere originality.
Payton was on the verge of signing the first sites for a new chicken restaurant chain. He had severed his last connection with My Kinda Townby the time it became a public company in May under the direction of managing director Peter Webber (see page 74).
He was a master of publicity and talked about hisachievements with wit and enthusiasm. He knew how to blow his own trumpet but never did so unless he had achieved the exacting standards he set himself.
Only a few failures, notably a venture in Bath and a fish restaurant called Payton Plaice in London, interrupted the evolution of the first Chicago Pizza Pie Factory in Crown Passage, off St James's, London, into the international restaurant chain it is today with a turnover of £35m.
In 1992, while Payton was still involved with My Kinda Town, the company entered into partnership with Forte to reopen the Criterion Brasserie. It was a venture which proved successful despite the recession and strong competition in London from establishments such as Quaglino's.
His venture into country house hotels with Stapleford Park was predicted to fail. But, although the property had been on the market for some time when he died, it remained a curious part of the mythology he liked to create around himself. It was, and still is, a hotel conspicuous for its relaxed style and comfort in a beautiful setting. It was also an opportunity for Payton to indulge his interest in hunting and to foster the startling contrast of a big, fast-talking American living in the style of the English landed gentry.
Payton's wit and self-awareness is summed up in two inscriptions on one of the wings of Stapleford. The first, the work of an earlier owner, reads: "William Lord Sherard, Baron of Letrym, repayred this building Anno Domini 1663." The visitor has to have his attention drawn to the second much more modest plaque, which reads: "And Bob Payton did his bit, Anno Domini 1988."
