The day after I moved into my former home in Sheraden, my hospitable semi-retired neighbor took it upon himself to show me around some local staples.
After stops at the plaza in Crafton and the grocery store in Westwood, the quick circuit through McKees Rocks and Stowe involved mostly admonitions from Mike, my kind but wary host, to avoid this bar and that joint.
“What’s the deal with that place?” I asked, motioning to a gray, blockish structure with barely a slit of window and a square hanging sign pronouncing “Rudy’s Bar and Grill” in unadorned red print.
“Rudy’s,” he shrugged. “At one time it served the best ham sandwich in Pittsburgh.”
“How about now?”
“I don’t know,” he answered resolutely. Somehow it felt churlish to press further, so for eight years, I’ve driven past this Island Avenue haunt with a nagging sense of curiosity — until last week, when an inexplicable impulse stirred me out of my ignorance.
Rudy’s perches on a gentle corner of Island Avenue, a half-block from the intersection with Chartiers Avenue, where, locals will tell you, lies the slowest traffic light in Allegheny County. While there are no signs or markings, parking on the blind bend in front of the bar would perhaps be more foolhardy even than occupying the notorious spot outside Evergreen Cafe on Penn Avenue.
I turn up a mostly vacant residential street that skirts the bar up a steep incline and pray my parking brake holds up as I step onto the cracked sidewalk.
It’s a Wednesday lunchtime. I take a seat at the bar and am greeted from the other side by Jennie, who asks what she can get me. The choice feels obvious: “Ham sandwich and a bottle of Iron City, please.” (You won’t find any IPA or Kölsch here, thank you — although the bar is pretty well stocked with liquor for a neighborhood dive).
A few minutes later, almost an entire pound of thickly sliced short-shank ham is delivered within spongy edible plates of Mancini’s Italian bread that somehow appear puny by comparison. But before I can take a bite, a coupon arrives beside my plastic basket of decadence.
“That’s for you,” Jennie says. “Leroy bought you a drink,” gesturing a few heads down the bar to a gray-haired man with squarish features and tattooed arms. I thank him and he waves me over, so I shuffle across the room carrying my food and take a seat next to my new friend.
I learn, to my surprise, LeRoy is not a regular of the 89-year-old institution, but a relative newcomer to the neighborhood. His ease and friendliness despite this speak of the bar’s familiar and welcoming ambiance. He talks freely as I shovel away unashamedly.
Overfilling a sandwich with meat always runs the risk of overpowering the other ingredients, in terms of both texture and flavor. But this short-shank cut, cured less than two miles away at Silverstar Meats on McKees Rocks Road, is surprisingly mild and exquisitely succulent. The remaining ingredients are closely guarded by owner Jackie Presley but there’s no hiding the shining discs of tomato and the long flap of crisp lettuce. Beyond that, I detect some gently reassuring mayonnaise-based dressing blend. No mustard, though.
Returning then to my eight-year question: is it the best in Pittsburgh?
A proper answer probably demands a far greater knowledge of the local food scene than that of an uncultured news editor. But my task is made easy by a suspicion that Rudy’s is really without competition in the ham sandwich game.
Ham is admittedly easy enough to find on a sandwich served at any bar, diner, or coffee shop, but it’s usually subservient to some other filling like fries (Primanti brothers) or egg or cheese (just about everywhere else). So however good they may be, these offerings are simply not in the same camp as Rudy’s self-assured sandwich, where the ham plays second fiddle to no one. And as far as I can tell, the gourmet sandwich places dotted around the East End and the South Side rarely bother with ham — the inferior sibling of roast beef, eggplant, and pastrami.
In any case, Rudy’s is a damn good sandwich, and so it has my vote. But it’s not just the culinary aspect that makes it a winner. Rudy’s is in its 90th year serving the resilient McKees Rocks community, and the legendary recipe has been passed along through three owners.
When Presley took over five years ago, she initially considered changing the name and refashioning the menu and aesthetic. But a little time with the locals quickly convinced her otherwise.
“Everybody asked us ‘will you still be doing the sandwich?’” Presley recalls.
So she learned the recipe under the tutelage of former owner Gus Aiello, who died in 2018 shortly after the sale, and it remains a signature draw along with what I’m told is an equally laudable fish sandwich. (I’ll be back for that sometime.)
The bar takes its name from original owner Rudy Gerger, who sold it onto Aiello in the 1970s. Presley says she’s proud to continue the legacy.
“I plan to own it as long as Gus and Rudy, and I won’t give away the recipe until then,” Presley tells me. “It’s always been my dream to own a small local bar that’s like family — it's everything I wanted it to be. When people come in, you know their name.”
My eventful lunchtime visit certainly confirms this. After my sandwich, I follow Leroy out for a cigarette. As we chat, the woman beside us at the bar emerges behind us after an apparently hearty daytime session. She indicates she needs help crossing the road to get to her ride, so Leroy grabs an arm and I instinctively take the other. We check for traffic and make our way across the street. I head back inside and order another beer with my coupon from Leroy.
That’s family, right?
