Rudy's Bar & Grill
Every drink comes with a free hot dog at 627 9th Avenue, and Rudy's has poured since 1933 on one of New York's first liquor licenses after Prohibition.1 The mahogany bar you lean on came off the Bowery, made to order for $300.
Why go
Helen Rudy used to keep two German Shepherds at the door. If a customer fell asleep or turned unruly she gave a signal, the dogs came and sat with him at the bar, and they growled until he behaved or left.1 Jack, a former Merchant Marine, bought the place in 1982. The booths are red leather held together with duct tape, mosaics of Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie went up in the early 1990s, and a six-foot pig called the Baron stands bolted down outside the door. Rudy's says Rolling Stone voted its jukebox the best in the city in 1996 and that Anthony Bourdain ate a few of the hot dogs.1 Both of those are the bar's own telling.
Order this / avoid
- Order: a cheap beer and take the free hot dog that comes with it.1
- Avoid: arriving hungry for dinner. The hot dog is the whole kitchen.
What locals & experts say
- The bar's own account of what it is: a
legendary microcosm of New York, as friendly, unpretentious, and wildly diverse as the best of the city itself.
1 - Irvine Welsh on the neighborhood, quoted by Rudy's from a New Yorker interview conducted in one of its booths:
Hell's Kitchen, one ay the few good uns. It's still becoming yuppified n gentrified, bit eh's one ay the last bastions.
1
Good to know
- Booking: none.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "Free hotdogs. Alvin rec."
Verdict
could-visit — Nobody books and there is no dinner here, so come for a cheap beer. Jeff has it down for the free hot dogs, on Alvin's recommendation.