The last four pages of the menu at Joey’s Brickhouse, a Lakeview restaurant known for its kitschy decor and all-you-can-drink Tuesday-night pizza special, have nothing to do with food. They’re a series of angry e-mails between a woman from Deerfield named Diane and the restaurant’s owners, brothers Greg and Joey Morelli.
The restaurant’s tagline (“We’re Italian Jews. Which means besides bickering, we’re into food”) notwithstanding, Greg Morelli says, “This has been a nightmare on our heads since the day we opened. It’s become my own personal albatross, you have no idea.”
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Actually the feud between Latsko and the Morellis started before Joey’s was open, almost three years ago. The Morellis, who grew up in Highland Park but moved away after high school, had returned to Chicago when Joey hatched the scheme to open the restaurant. Their father, Frank, a retired developer, would supervise the construction of the space. Greg, who’d been working in advertising in New York, would manage, and Joey, who’d been a chef, would cook. Their mother, Barbara, would design the room. Greg says the strain of opening the restaurant ended both his brother’s marriage and his own long-term relationship, but “when your family calls you, you pick up and go.”
“Yeah, he shoved me, but I didn’t call the cops or anything,” says Joey. While Greg is all business, Joey’s known for being smooth and charming, coming out from the kitchen to schmooze the guests. “I didn’t want it to go any further than that. He’s very confrontational. Scary … He used to come in here yelling and screaming all the time. He’s like that little guy—what’s-his-name from GoodFellas—a little guy but with a real ‘Don’t mess with me’ kind of attitude.”
The Morellis gave up and decided to put up some signs of their own. They posted one just outside the restaurant’s side door, painted to look like a roadblock. It says “Don’t park here. Lincoln Towing will get you!” Another one, atop the pay phone out front, reads “Tow Phone.” Inside, taped to the hostess’s stand, a third one says “No parking in the parking lot. If you think that’s an oxymoron, you should meet the guy who owns the parking lot … oy!”
But Greg Morelli says he and Joey have good relationships with most of the tenants in the strip mall. “The branch manager at the bank told me he’s completely behind us,” he says. In fact, Drew Projansky, the branch manager, signed the proposal the Morellis sent to Tunney’s office. Projansky says he worked as a parking valet in college and finds the idea of a lot sitting empty at night when someone is willing to pay to use it “asinine.” Looking out at the lot from his office, he estimates that a seasoned valet could fit an extra 30 cars over the number of “traditional” spaces in the lot at night, even if a few spaces were reserved by the bank for its ATM customers. “Joey’s is a client of ours, and I would love to see them have access to the lot if it would help their business,” he says.
