A Slice of Americana
Photography by Kimarie Martin Photography
What is more Bexley than the 4th of July? Pizzas, subs and ice cream shops, perhaps? Or perhaps the feeling of community and knowing the names of folks you encounter on Main Street every day?
Rubino’s sits at the intersection of all of those intangible feelings of Americana.
The current owner, Jim Parchese, insists that the history of the restaurant is the big story here, though we wanted to learn more about the man behind the counter, too.
In 1954, when pizzas were so new to America that there were only ten pizza joints in Columbus, Ruben Cohen decided to leave behind his traveling salesman days (Columbus was his territory) and made his name sound Italian instead of Jewish. Rubino’s was born. It was cash only, had a classic eatery look, and not much has changed.
“Part of Rubino’s is the fact that we don’t change,” Jim says. “That’s for a couple of reasons. When people come back to town, they can feel comfortable and feel like they’re in their old haunt. Same phones. Same mechanical register. No computers. And we still treat the customers the same, too. We recognize eighty percent of customers too. We know their name and their orders. It makes them feel appreciated. We joke and all that. It’s hands-on interaction. We’re disrespectful and joke at people on purpose. It’s a fun time. And the food’s not bad either.”
Jim says that Rubino’s is about the person at the front, the one who jokes with customers, “that’s me, or it has been. I’m trying to slow down. I’m 75. I’ve been there 34 years.” Jim inherited the person-at-the-counter status from his dad, Frank, who joined Rube’s pizza parlor in 1955. Jim’s uncle had also been there in the earliest days, and when he left, “my dad came in and more or less ran the place. He’s the one most people remember. A lot of the older people remember Rube, but most people remember Dad.”
“Dad had a habit of giving the phone a karate chop to answer it and it flew up. People still ask for that,” Jim recalls. “He would count out change and do rhymes, like seventy five and that’s no jive. That’s where ‘That’s no jive’ came from. That’s our tagline.”
Jim came to Rubino’s in 1989, “paid his dues and let Dad relax and retire. He had a stroke,” Jim says. By that time, Jim had earned the right to stand at the register. Now, he’s continuing the cycle as his daughter, Julie, is learning to take over. “I get more satisfaction interacting with the customers than from the sale,” Jim says. “I don’t mind making the pizzas but I live for the interaction. My daughter is learning that too, that that’s where it’s at, and that’s what keeps people coming back.”
The pizzas, though, are among the thinnest around. Jim says the most popular order is pepperoni and sausage. Rubino’s makes their own sausage, “baked in a loaf,” Jim says, “and we add in our own spices.” Right now, “the hot thing is the pickles. We sell an awful lot of pickle pizzas. Sausage and pickles is most popular. We started that ten or twelve years ago. As far as I’m concerned we started that. We’re the home of the pickle pizza. We had one of our waitresses putting pickles on a cheese pizza and it evolved into something we made for ourselves.”
Now, the pickle pizza has a tie to one of Rubino’s biggest community connections, its sponsorship of the Team Bexley for Pelotonia. Jim took one of the pickle pizzas to the Pelotonia kick-off, giving the topping its public debut.
Though Rubino’s support the local schools and churches as much as they can, Jim’s charitable emphasis has been on Pelotonia. “We had a team in the first peloton, and we’ve been going ever since. I lost my wife, Sue, to cancer. That’s what got me connected.” Jim is proud that he’s, in his “small part,” helping make some good inroads with the research so people like Sue, who had breast cancer, can experience different treatments. “That’s the whole drive behind Pelotonia. It’s one hell of an organization. It’s just a good thing, a small town thing and look what it’s turned into in 15 years.”
Jim says the special memories of working at Rubino’s are countless. “We had a wedding reception here one time. It started as a joke. We ship pizzas all around the country. We had a lady call from Anchorage, Alaska. Her mother had cancer and was in hospice and really wanted Rubino’s pizza, so we shipped it. I got a really nice note back from them. Bob Greene: I haven’t seen him in a long time, but he was a big supporter back in the day.”
“I’m just a regular old guy, emphasis on the old part. I just do what I do. But people like to joke. I knew their dad or their grandpa, and we like to joke and it brings back memories,” Jim says. “We’re just trying to keep it going, keep it simple, keep it what people want.”
