Beloved Ritz Barbecue set to reopen
Longtime eatery had closed in spring 2020 amid pandemic
A beloved and recently shuttered landmark restaurant is days away from a rebirth in Allentown.
Ritz Barbecue, a nearly century-old eatery that closed last spring amid the coronavirus pandemic, is set to reopen Thursday at 302 N. 17th St. under new owners Dan and Laurie Wuchter, who operate the neighboring Allentown Fairgrounds Farmers Market.
The restaurant will be open for lunch and dinner service only for its first few days, March 4-8, with daily breakfast service set to be added into the mix beginning next Tuesday, March 9, Laurie Wuchter said.
Tentative regular hours, starting March 9, will be 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. (last seating).
“The ice cream window may stay open later,” Laurie said.
Dan Wuchter has been involved with the farmers market since the mid-1950s, when he began working as a teenager for Dan’s Poultry Market, an extension of his family’s farm in the Egypt section of Whitehall Township. The business, now known as Dan’s Bar-B-Qued Chicken, continues to operate in the market.
“After working at the farm, my friend and I would come down to the Ritz at night,” he recalled. “We were 15 or 16, and it was just a big hangout back then — with motorcycles and so forth.”
Ritz, which Billy Ritz began as an Allentown Fairgrounds stand in 1927, was known for its barbecue, including sliced beef, pork and turkey with barbecue sauce — along with its wide array of ice cream flavors, including the popular butter brickle.
The Wuchters plan to continue offering these staples while introducing dishes such as Southern-style pork barbecue and all-you-can-eat spaghetti. A “Blue Ribbon Special” will include certain dishes with a free scoop of ice cream.
“I’m originally from North Carolina, and I had never heard of hot bacon dressing in my entire life,” Laurie Wuchter said. “The first time I ever had it was at the Ritz, and I loved it. So, we are definitely bringing that back.”
The couple also intends to source sausage, scrapple and other items from farmers market vendors.
“Our cooking will be homestyle,” she said. “We’ll be doing fresh-roasted turkey, and even our burgers will be hand-pattied. Luckily, we secured one of the Ritz cooks, who was there for over 20 years. So, he has all of the traditional recipes like the barbecues that everybody keeps asking about, as well as the oyster pies, corn pies and other dishes.”
Ritz used to make its own ice cream, but a 1998 fire damaged the machinery in the restaurant’s basement.
In recent years, the eatery sourced its ice cream from a handful of vendors, including Hershey, Nelson’s and Scoopendorf ’s Ice Cream Co.
For its new iteration, the Wuchters secured a local company to make its more than 40 rotating hard ice cream flavors, including classics like chocolate, vanilla and strawberry, and other popular picks such as teaberry, pistachio and cookies and cream.
Customers will be able to order from an expansive menu of chilled treats, including sherbets, sundaes, milkshakes and floats.
“We want to bring the Ritz back to the way it was because people have such fond memories of it,” Laurie Wuchter said. “I hear from people all the time saying, ‘My mom and dad met here and they’ve been married for so many years.’ So that’s what we want to bring back. We want people to return, fall in love and have their kids come back.”
Ritz’s previous owners, Jeff and Grace Stinner, took control of the restaurant in 1981 and decided to list the business for sale more than a year ago as they were nearing retirement. It was a confidential listing though, “so it didn’t generate a whole lot of interest,” Grace Stinner told The Morning Call in June.
“It was getting to be that time,” she said of their decision to bow out of the restaurant industry. “The restaurant business is rough, and it was getting to us physically.”
The Stinners closed Ritz the day before Gov. Tom Wolf ’s order last March that suspended operations at all nonessential businesses, which included on-site dining service at restaurants. In June, they announced that it would not reopen under their management.
“It made us close,” Grace Stinner said of the COVID-19 mitigation efforts in June. “We did want to stay open until someone else took over, but that’s not feasible now. We had all of our inventory to pay for, the rent and insurance. It adds up.”
The Wuchters plan to maintain much of the restaurant’s original look, with the exception of new wall paint and decorative accents such as Allentown Fair and Ritz memorabilia.
On a few walls, photos of the Ritz from over the decades will be showcased behind Plexiglas, and the Wuchters are welcoming restaurant photos from longtime customers to be added to the collection.
“We’re going to have three or four walls that will display memorabilia and various pictures of people sitting in the Ritz, hanging out and so forth,” Laurie Wuchtersaid. “One couple that we know met at the Ritz about 50 years ago and later got married. So, they’re giving us a picture of them together.”
Other upgrades to the Ritz will include new kitchen equipment, lighting and a sound system. Ritz’s old-fashioned outdoor sign, featuring bright neon lights, also is staying.
“We want it to be a family-friendly destination for great-tasting food at great prices,” she said. “And if people don’t want to come in, they can order whatever they like to-go, including a whole turkey meal or a whole ham meal. We’ll be taking advance orders for Easter.”