The owners and staff of the Grant Bar & Restaurant worked through their tears for their last night of service at the packed restaurant on Nov. 29, a week after announcing on Facebook that the Millvale establishment would permanently close after operating for more than 90 years.
Jackie Roethlein, wife of co-owner Joe Roethlein, said her 27 years of working there had been “wonderful,” especially because of the customers.
“They are the best. They’ve supported us for years, and we hate to see them go,” she said.
The two co-owners, Roethlein and John “Junior” Ruzomberka Jr., said they wished they didn’t have to close, but between getting older and dealing with rising costs, they felt it was getting too hard on them.
“My age, my feet, my legs. I come in here at five o’clock in the morning, making pies,” Roethlein said. “I’m 67, Junior’s 80. It’s getting too hard on us.”
Ruzomberka said everything from food to taxes to utilities is costing more, making it hard to keep up without raising the prices on the menus.
“Prices are just getting so far that I can’t keep up with it. I don’t want to raise prices because then I’m going to lose customers,” he said.
According to the listing, the building was known as the Bennett Hotel in the 1880s. Ruzomberka said his grandparents, Maria and Matthew Ruzomberka, bought the property in 1926 and named it the Grant Bar Lounge in 1933.
After World War II, their two sons, Frank and John Ruzomberka Sr., took over and expanded the menu to include items which would become customer favorites, such as the seafood and Frank’s homemade pies. Then Frank married Roethlein’s aunt and taught his nephew how to make the now-renowned homemade pies — apple, coconut cream, pumpkin and chocolate among them.
Roethlein said he made “somewhere between 150 and 160 pies” in the week leading up to closing night, including 80 to-go pies for Thanksgiving.
Ruzomberka Jr. said though he would have liked to pass the restaurant down to another family member as his predecessors did for him, it’s always taken a lot of work to stay in business and he hasn’t found anyone willing to take it on.
“None of the kids are willing to put in this amount of time. I had one vacation in 60 years,” he said. “And that was with my wife, and we only had three days for vacation. It’s all we could take. So it’s tough, and you got to love the business and stay in it.”
He said after listing the property in August he was hoping someone would buy it and keep the business going.
“They can have the name, they can have the ‘Grant Bar Incorporated,’ they can have all the stuff, all the recipes, everything — just keep it going,” Ruzomberka said.
As of Dec. 15, the property is still listed for $1.5 million.
Though now the Grant Bar is closed and may never return, it will live on in customers’ fond memories.
Karl Roeper traveled from his home in Roanoke, Va., to visit his family for Thanksgiving. After seeing on social media that the Grant Bar was closing, he decided to make reservations for their last night of service with his daughter, Kaitlin Roeper, and her husband, Ben Fecik.
“I’m from Millvale originally. So this has been like an institution ever since I was a kid. This is where we always came for special occasions. Kind of sad to see it go,” he said.
Roeper and his daughter both said the cod parmesan was one of their favorite dishes at the restaurant, while Fecik said he loved the chicken parmesan and the tapioca pudding.
Gary Reinart Jr. was born in Millvale and said his first time at the Grant Bar was when he was 16 years old — he helped his father install the ceiling in the dining room.
Now 85 and living in Carnegie, he still came to the restaurant “at least two, three times a week” until closing night — and always for the same dish: the prime rib.
“The best prime rib in the city. Believe me, I’ve had them all,” he said.
Roethlein said he is grateful for all the customers who came in so many times all these years, many of whom became familiar regulars.
“I know so many of them,” he said. “I walk through the dining room — bang, bang, I’m stopping every 5 feet to say, ‘Hey!’ ”
In a statement on Facebook, Millvale Mayor Brian Spoales said as “a cornerstone” of the Millvale community where three generations of families gathered for nearly a century, the Grant Bar was “more than just a restaurant.”
“We join the entire community in mourning the loss of this historical landmark,” Spoales wrote. “As the owners rightly noted, the memories created within those walls — the milestone celebrations, the quiet family dinners, the shared laughter — are woven into the fabric of our borough’s history. That legacy is permanent.”
Spoales in an emailed statement said his fondest memories of the restaurant are “its classic atmosphere, the familiar regulars and the many great celebrations shared with friends.”
“It was always a place where you could settle in and feel comfortable,” he said.