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Torre, who died final week on the age of 81.
Picture: Courtesy of @FirstWeFeast/youtube.com
There aren’t many New York pubs extra well-known than JG Melon. It’s most generally recognized for its burger, a tractor beam with a aspect of cottage fries for the throngs who’ve descended on the place through the years. However to the joint’s many regulars, essentially the most well-known factor about Melon’s, because it’s known as, is its longtime host Robert “Bobby” Torre. “Yeah, they’d the best burger in New York. However they’d the best, what do you name him — maître d’? Not likely. Host?” says George Ledes, who describes himself as a “relative newcomer” to the restaurant. (By which he means he began coming within the early ’80s.) “He was an establishment. He actually made that place tick.”
On April 7, Torre died on the age of 81 from pure causes. Providers had been held final week and, regardless of the quick discover, in accordance with Torre’s nephew Rob Valenti, drew a whole lot of individuals, together with mates who flew up from Florida, each a Protestant and Unitarian minister, and a Kramer impersonator. “You’d stroll down the road with him and he knew all people. All of the doormen. It will take perpetually simply to get down the block as a result of he chatted with everybody,” says Jaine O’Neill, whose late husband Jack O’Neill was one in all Melon’s authentic house owners.
Torre spent just about his entire life on the Higher East Aspect. Born on January 23, 1944, he was raised within the neighborhood, the place his mom labored on the Mary Manning Walsh Dwelling. Many purchasers at JG Melon knew him for many years, however none so long as his childhood mates Margie Saglimbene and Shaun Younger, who each joined him at Melon. Saglimbene says they met in settlement golf equipment, which had been began to supply social providers to the poor. “We had been avenue youngsters, we grew up poor,” says Younger, including that their group of mates turned household as they bought older. “He was simply an distinctive individual coming from the place he grew up, I’ve to say that.”
At one level within the ’60s, Saglimbene was working at an Italian restaurant when she bought “deathly in poor health” and was hospitalized. Torre coated her shifts till she may work once more — he wanted cash, however he additionally had her again. “I’ve a photograph of us from after we had been in our 20s; he took me to the Copacabana,” she remembers. “It was my birthday and he purchased me this little necklace. It was so cute. We had been all the time very pricey mates. We had been by no means romantic in any approach. However we had been shut.”
JG Melon opened in 1973 — a couple of years after the New York Occasions wrote “Higher East Aspect No Longer Dullsville to Younger” — and Torre presided over the preppy hangout for half a century. Over time, he turned part of the place, as well-known because the burgers or Bloody Bulls or inexperienced checkered tablecloths. On the partitions are plaques for former staff and regulars who’ve handed away: “Harry Feldman ‘Harry the Hat,’” “Mac ‘The Greatest,’” “Steve’s Desk.” One is for “Uncle Richie,” whose son, Richard Blum, was additionally a longtime common earlier than he moved upstate. “I began going there very early on, most likely when it opened. I was there as soon as per week. The times of Jack and George, the J and G of Melon’s,” Blum remembers. Regardless of his tenured standing as a buyer, Blum says Torre would make him anticipate a desk like everybody else: “He didn’t play favorites. You actually couldn’t soar the record.”
Torre, years in the past.
Picture: Courtesy of Rob Valenti
Torre was recognized to present prospects lists of flicks they need to see or songs they need to take heed to. Famously, he managed the group with a “crumpled-up, folded-over piece of paper,” as one buyer put it. Those that grew up going to the restaurant described him as somebody who taken care of them. “He positively had virtually like a fatherly or an uncle sort of aura within the neighborhood,” says Valenti. Bridget O’Brian, one other common, shared on Instagram that one time on the way in which house from faculty, she was apprehensive she was being adopted. She went into Melon’s, frightened, and was escorted house by Torre. Dan Aguinaga is one other neighbor who began going to Melon’s as a child: “Bobby simply made you actually really feel at house,” he says. “And he would all the time ask about you. He all the time remembered all the small print from if you final informed him.”
A few of these particulars had been small. One Higher East Sider, who goes a half-dozen instances a 12 months, informed me that she wasn’t on a personal-name foundation with Torre. “However he was all the time there, and for some motive all the time made us wait longer to present us the ‘excellent desk’ — which was certainly the proper spherical desk the place you might see every thing,” she says. “He should’ve recognized me to a sure extent, as a result of Dijon all the time landed on the desk once I sat, however he by no means requested for my title.”
Different particulars had been huge. When Aguinaga’s grandmother fell in poor health in 2009, Torre would ask after her. Later one night time, Aguinaga and his uncle had been along with her at Sloan Kettering. She’d fallen asleep, and the docs informed them to get some sleep, too. “We didn’t need to fall asleep, and we knew Melon’s was open till 2:30,” he says. He remembers Torre — devoutly Catholic — sitting with them and sharing Bible readings. “I keep in mind being touched and crammed with optimism in a second of unhappiness,” he says. “And it helped my uncle and I settle for what was occurring and type of see it as a celebration of life.”
Torre turned extra spiritual as he bought older, and acquaintances typically mentioned he may have turn out to be a priest. “Anytime he may step in and be supportive when folks had been in ache, he tapped into that a part of himself,” O’Neill says.
“Individuals from the neighborhood would go to see him only for recommendation,” Valenti provides. Torre was beneficiant in materials methods, as effectively: serving to prospects make connections within the restaurant or sending presents. “I imply, I do know nothing about his funds, however I’m certain he didn’t have any cash when he left us, as a result of he would continuously be taking folks out to dinner and those that had been in want,” Saglimbene says. “He spent his cash on different folks.”
O’Neill remembers a morning years in the past, listening to a program on WOR the place folks had been introduced on to call sure songs. Torre was the visitor and guessed the fitting tune after “three notes.” When he was requested how he knew it so shortly, he defined that the tune was on the Melon’s jukebox. “He gained a considerable sum of money and donated a very good portion of it to the Bowery Males’s Mission,” she remembers.
That Torre was capable of guess the tune didn’t shock her. She described him as a “strolling encyclopedia,” somebody who soaked up data. Saglimbene considered him the identical approach and says his wit stayed with him till the tip: “Once I went as much as the hospital to see him, I used to be speaking to him, and I mentioned, ‘Bobby, you’ve the thoughts of an encyclopedia. It’s superb,’” she says. “And he mentioned, ‘However Margie, it’s right down to a dictionary.’ He was so fast, you by no means knew what was going to come back out.”
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