Sunday, September 26, 1999
The prime of Jeff Ruby
New downtown steakhouse is biggest bite for tough, flamboyant, driven restaurateur
BY LISA BIANK FASIG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Jeff Ruby outside his self-titled new restaurant, opening Monday at Seventh and Walnut Streets downtown.
(Gary Landers photo)
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In the early hours of an April night, Cincinnati's most powerful, most athletic and most celebrated flocked downtown to the gutted dining room of the defunct Ciao Cucina restaurant to celebrate the birthday of the site's latest operator and expected savior.
Predictably, perfectionist restaurateur Jeff Ruby hosted an event to be talked about for evenings to come. By 7:15, the vast crowd was pressed to the walls. Mr. Ruby, in pinstripes and fedora, sang “Jump, Jive an' Wail” to shimmying blondes and executives nibbling lamb chops. In the inches of visibility winking between surgically enhanced bodies, party-goers glimpsed Boomer Esiason, Sean Casey and millionaire Carl Lindner.
Reds General Manager Jim Bowden would later call the new restaurant at Seventh and Walnut streets Jeff Ruby's “crown jewel ... the story of his whole life.”
Brian Jeffrey Ruby's life story is that of a barefaced, fatherless kid who worked hard and whose ball-of-fire charm won over celebrities and rich executives. This combination empowered him to open some of the hottest restaurants and clubs in town. Mr. Ruby says his third restaurant, to open Monday, will tell of this life spent pounding out a living in the unforgiving restaurant game.
The April party was typical Jeff Ruby — glitzy, theatrical and promotional. Though a birthday bash, it doubled as a chance to show off his latest venture and to pick a name for the new restaurant. The 500 guests voted overwhelmingly that Mr. Ruby name it after himself.
But the vote of confidence did not prevent people from wondering whether Mr. Ruby could make this place work. The restaurant business is one of the toughest around, after all, and more attempts fail than survive. And here's Mr. Ruby building a 1940s, New York-style steakhouse with his name all over it, smack in the middle of downtown.
Mr. Ruby and some associates predict that yes, he can make it work, because he's as tough as the industry. The guy is uncompromising, acquaintances say; he doesn't know how to lose. He built the celebrated Precinct in a clunker building with a grim restaurant history. He developed the restaurant complex the Waterfront, making it the spot to see sports celebrities in Cincinnati.
He has the financial backing of some of the most influential men in Cincinnati — men with money, famous athletes, including Mr. Lindner and Mr. Esiason, Pete Rose and Johnny Bench.
“If this place failed, I'm the one that comes out with the big black eye,” Mr. Ruby said.
“Yeah, I think I can make it work ... I'm overworked, overexcited, overweight and overrated. But I'm not over the hill,” he said. “And I'm not overconfident.”
Mr. Ruby's newest restaurant gives the city a new reason to talk about him, to speculate on his successes and his flashy lifestyle. He is not universally loved. Some people resent his association with professional athletes and stars; some wrinkle their noses at his thick gold jewelry, fat cigars and brusque personality.
In four months of interviews with dozens of Mr. Ruby's associates, friends and employees, a side of him emerges that few people see. While those who know Mr. Ruby agree he is driven and dictatorial, they also describe a side of him that is compassionate.
“He can appear to be different than he is,” said Patty Guethlein, a bartender who spent half her life — 23 years — working for Jeff Ruby. “I'm afraid that people think that Jeff does everything for publicity for his restaurants.
“I know him and inside I know he's just a good person.”
A rough childhood
Mr. Ruby threw his feet atop his large desk in his Anderson Township home office and discreetly drew from his trademark cigar. He talked about growing up in the coastal town of Neptune, N.J., a middle-income community that attracts more residents than visitors. He recalled grainy days of boyhood, making pea soup at his mother's restaurants.
“The restaurant has been my life since I was 8 years old,” he said. “By the time I was 14, I thought I was better than all of them (chefs) because I just took the best things.”
Mr. Ruby did not have an easy childhood. He was the product of an adulterous affair who endured his mother's broken marriages and four fleeting step-fathers, the second of whom adopted him. But through the turmoil he worked at his mother's restaurants and learned the business.
“My mother, she was flamboyant,” he said. “She was a culinarian. When I was a kid, I didn't know what it meant. I thought it was a religion.”
Mr. Ruby inherited his mother's flamboyance, but working long hours at the restaurants ruined him at school. By the time he had turned 15, Jeff Ruby — born Brian Jeffrey Kranz — had failing grades and played second-team football.
But he knew how to take care of himself, and he knew he wanted to make something of himself. After one too many quarrels with his mother, he packed his suitcase and left home, hitching a ride on a Good Humor truck.
From then on he supported himself as a cook, living in rented rooms in the sand-scrubbed summer haven of Ocean Grove, a Methodist community.
He cooked at Perkins Pancake House before school. He attended football and wrestling practices after school. Jeff Ruby found a father figure in football coach Jeep Bednarik.
Mr. Bednarik saw “tremendous leadership qualities” in the boy. Mr. Ruby saw in his coach an adult whom he could make proud.
“Everything he's had he worked for,” Mr. Bednarik said.
High school friends and family agreed that nothing came easy for Mr. Ruby.
But success came fast. Mr. Ruby graduated an A students and went to Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration on a football scholarship. In 1970 he came to Cincinnati as innkeeper for area Holiday Inns. He met and mingled with Mr. Bench, then the young star catcher with the Reds. Mr. Bench and his teammates made the hotel clubs the hottest in town.
Mr. Ruby, meanwhile, made a reputation for himself as a hard-nosed manager who often handled rowdy customers with his fists. This, too, may have attracted the athletes, though fighting nearly got Mr. Ruby fired.
Friends said Mr. Ruby has mellowed over the years, but his 6-foot, 225-pound temper can still get him in trouble. He is facing menacing charges for an incident last week where he allegedly threatened a city meter attendant, who issued him a parking citation near his new restaurant.
According to police, Mr. Ruby told the attendant, “I ought to kick your butt.” Mr. Ruby is to appear in court Oct. 11 to answer to the menacing charge.
A fighting spirit at least helped Jeff Ruby in business. When he spotted a restaurant opportunity in a funky old building along Delta Avenue in the touch-and-go neighborhood of Columbia-Tusculum, Messrs. Bench and Rose agreed to back him. Others followed. When the Precinct opened in 1981, the sports figures came. The fans and beautiful women followed, often partying at its night club.
“You knew he was going to be successful because he wasn't going to quit until he was,” said Sparky Anderson, Reds manager during the heady years of the Big Red Machine. “Nothing ever stops these types of people. They devour things within themselves.”
Mr. Ruby opened his second restaurant, the Waterfront, in 1986. Combined sales at both restaurants exceeded $10 million in 1998. As before, Waterfront backers included the rich and famous — among them Mr. Esiason and Mr. Rose, Bengals receiver Cris Collinsworth and financier Mr. Lindner.
The rich and glitzy Ruby business plan continues. The Precinct backers plus developer Towne Properties officials Marvin Rosenberg and Neil Bortz are partners in Jeff Ruby's, the restaurant.
In addition, Mr. Ruby has formed a “Beefeaters Club” whose 25 members, including liability lawyer Stan Chesley and Bengals quarterback Jeff Blake, paid $20,000 each for unlimited eating rights.
“He has the reputation, like a great cook or a great musician or a great athlete,” Mr. Blake said.
The main ingredient in Mr. Ruby's recipe for success, associates say, is a tireless drive and an eye for detail. He is what one friend called a “grinder,” getting more from workers than they realize they have. Some employees don't like Mr. Ruby because they think he's too demanding, workers said. They tend not to last.
“You do your job, he's a great person to work for. You go against the grain, you may not be there — not the next day, the next hour,” said Eliot Sloan, singer of the band Blessid Union of Souls, and a member of the Waterfront's house band in 1992 and 1994.
Mr. Ruby sleeps about five hours a night. He hasn't had a vacation in 13 years. This summer, two days after undergoing his second angioplasty in about six months, Mr. Ruby was back at work at the new place.
“I gotta be open,” he said.
Opening and staying open is tough. Michael Comisar, managing partner of the five-star Maisonette downtown — and one of Jeff Ruby's main competitors — said the success rate in the restaurant business is “terrible.”
“The industry average, we make about 5 cents on the dollar,” Mr. Comisar said.
Michael Adams, executive editor of Restaurant Business magazine, called the restaurant industry one of the most stressful in the world. Yet Mr. Ruby wants to do it again.
“I enjoy life much more when I'm creating a new restaurant,” he said. “I'm a happier guy. I'm more excited.It's like a Broadway show. It's living theater.”
A reason to survive
@body:Mr. Ruby was 45 minutes late for an appointment at his new restaurant. He apologized, shut the office door and began taking messages off his cell phone.
“I've got a heart made of gold and a central nervous system made of mercury,” he said as he paced the room.
He called one of the restaurant's managers, Jason Druso, into the office. Mr. Druso is one of many kids — athletes and the down-and-out — to whom Mr. Ruby has become a mentor. He said he wants to help fatherless kids because he remembers what it's like not to have a father.
Mr. Druso, 24, met Mr. Ruby when he was a football and swimming star at Anderson High School. Mr. Ruby, an Anderson football booster, is known by most of the school's athletes.
“I just think he's brilliant and I'm not just blowing smoke,” Mr. Druso said. “I really look at it as if I'm attending the Jeff Ruby school of culinary entertainment. I could have gone anywhere I wanted to but I chose to go with him.”
Word has gotten out about Mr. Ruby's generosity. Teen-agers regularly swing by his 17-room home, valued at $1 million, to visit with his three children and eat his food. The boys say they like Mr. Ruby because he treats them like an equal, “a brother.” They also love the free dinners and introductions to sports greats.
“I respect him highly,” said Danny Fusaro, 13, from Anderson Township, “because he respects me.”
“He's all charisma,” added Chad Von Luehrte, Mr. Ruby's godson from Anderson Township. “People love him. People have nothing but respect. How can you not?.”
Mr. Ruby said helping children is his mission, one assigned when he survived a near-fatal accident in 1987. In the summer of that year, Mr. Ruby fell after stepping out of a moving car driven by his wife, suffering severe head injuries. Doctors said he had a 10 percent to 15 percent chance of full recovery. He left the hospital in a month.
“When I made it, I felt that there was a reason,” Mr. Ruby said. “I was going to give of myself to others.
“God doesn't take checks, you gotta come back and do things.”
Tough guy, best results
@body:Mr. Ruby is sitting in a booth in the lounge area of Nicholson's restaurant downtown, drinking coffee. His restaurant's opening is about a month away. He's nervous, he says.
“There's always problems that can push it back,” he said. “If I don't feel the staff is ready, I won't open. It takes a good 30 to 90 days to achieve balanced, gastrointestinal equilibrium.”
Mr. Ruby does push the date back twice, to give the staff more time to train and prepare.
Five months ago, Mr. Ruby expected to invest about $750,000 in renovating and decorating the former Ciao Cucina. Two weeks before the opening, with the restaurant 85 percent done, he and his backers had spent $1.4 million. His designer, David Stevens, said they paid about $250,000 alone for antiques and art from New York.
“Jeff is the toughest guy to work for, but he gets the best results,” said Mr. Stevens, who's designed roughly 800 projects around the world, including the Waterfront. “(This will) be the best I've done. He's not going to lose because he doesn't leave anything loose.”
The design — a French art deco with overtones of nouveau — is extravagant. Large nude sculptures top off the dining room's curved booths and elaborate entry. The walls are wrapped in imported bubinga wood,imported from Africa, that ripples like golden water. The high ceilings that made Ciao cavernous have been dropped, replaced by warm wooden panels and diamond-shaped lighting.
The place is all New Yawk, as Mr. Ruby's friends like to say. Coppers and golds and reds, accented by marble, gold leaf, grand deco murals and old-time posters for liquor and cigars.
To run Jeff Ruby's, Mr. Ruby needs 45 servers, 30 kitchen workers, a dozen at the bar, a dozen at valet, and a couple in the office. They trained for weeks, some for months.
“The restaurant in my opinion is ... a place where people feel like they're going to somebody's house rather than going to a restaurant,” Mr. Ruby said.
Though Jeff Ruby's is a steakhouse, it will be different than the upscale Precinct and the Waterfront. The menu, designed by Executive Chef Jimmy Gibson, has a different selection of meats, seafood and side dishes than the other two restaurants. It also will be open for lunch in about a month — a Ruby first.
He may be nervous, and he might not be overconfident, but Mr. Ruby is assured. At 51, he knows his business. And he has the guts to put what he knows into concrete and fine china and expensive food.
“A steakhouse downtown,” he said, “is as right as rain on a cornfield.”
'Hundreds of little things'
@body:In the early hours of a mid-September night, a few hundred of the city's most prestigious and beautiful swept into the renovated dining room of Mr. Ruby's new restaurant to toast his “crown jewel.”
The event was a $250-a-head benefit for the Boomer Esiason Foundation, and included all the elements that define the restaurateur, from loud fashion to fine food. The benefit also lent a sneak peak into downtown's newest and much-anticipated restaurant.
Sipping vodka and nibbling on crab cakes, many in the high-profile crowd called Jeff Ruby's a home run. They loved the bronze sculptures, the attractive servers and separate smoking room with its own bar.
“I think if there is ever a guy who can pull it off, it would be Jeff Ruby,” Mr. Esiason said. “I have never seen a guy work so hard in all my life.”
Before the party, Mr. Ruby supervised preparation as if he were setting the stage for a performance. His eye caught the occasional stray uniform tag, an unplaced lock of hair, the “synthetic smile.”
Servers responded militarily. “I understand sir. I'm sorry, sir!”
By 8 o'clock, Mr. Ruby transformed his energy into entertainment. He regaled guests with his imitation of party-goer and TV pitchman Buddy Kallick of Buddy's Carpet. A steady line moved down the buffet line, loading up on lamb, steak and shrimp. Around 11 p.m., members of the Cincinnati Reds landed, along with Sammy Sosa of the visiting Chicago Cubs.
After five months, the new Jeff Ruby restaurant had arrived.
Around midnight, Mr. Ruby's wife Rickelle slipped into a seat at the bar. She married Mr. Ruby in 1982, the year after he opened the Precinct. “He was born to do this,” she said. “I can't imagine him doing anything else.”
Mr. Ruby relaxed at a table in the back of the dining room, nursing a glass of ice water and fussing with his tight wingtips.
“The restaurant business is no big thing. It's hundreds of little things,” he said. “There are so many details.”
Sometime around 1 a.m., with the party still going, Mr. Ruby called it a night. He put the event into his staff's hands and slipped into his silver Mercedes convertible.
As he pulled away east on Seventh Street, he left behind one more message on his vanity license plates: “THNK YOU.”
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