Former Signature Room workers protest restaurant’s abrupt closure, seek back pay: ‘We are not going to stand for it’

Martin Torres (center), a former cook at the Signature Room who worked at the restaurant for five years, chants during a protest Wednesday with other former workers represented by Unite Here Local 1 outside the building at 875 N. Michigan Ave. (Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times)

Jesus Abe Lar worked at the Signature Room long before it was the Signature Room.

For 46 years, Abe Lar served as a bartender in the restaurant at the top of the former John Hancock Center, greeting customers who would come back year after year, traveling from across the country, always coming to him because he made “the good drinks.”