profile
For Love of A
Neighborhood Joint
Ruth Perretti and Eric Kaplan serve students by day, and their music-loving parents at night
WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY JULIA MARTIN
f you haven’t heard of
Ruthie’s Bar-B-Q & Pizza in
Montclair, there’s a reason
— and it’s not because it
doesn’t serve butt-kicking
Southern-style ribs, along
with worthy Jersey pizza and
first-class live music. No,
more likely it’s because the restau-
rant’s quirky personality and low-
key charm have kept it one of the
best-kept secrets in North Jersey
for the past 10 years.
The gathering place is a labor
of love for Ruth Perretti and her
husband, Eric Kaplan, who met 12
years ago at Franklin’s bar in West
Orange, where jazz legends Betty
Lavette and Kevin Kiley were jam-
ming. Perretti, then a marketing
executive for Ralph Lauren, was
living in Manhattan but visiting her
hometown of Montclair; Kaplan
was a music-loving CIA-trained
chef at the Waldorf Astoria. They
fell in love and began building a
new life together in Montclair.
“We loved our jobs but wanted
to create something of our own
together, a place where we could
live and work,” she says. “Ruthie’s
is a love story about Eric and me,
our love for good music and food,
and for community.”
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STREET SCENE
A student-created
mural defines where
diners take in music.
The seed of their dream was plant-
ed when Perretti was a little girl grow-
ing up in a big house on Montclair’s
tony South Mountain Avenue. “We
had these big gorgeous lawns, but you
never saw anyone on them,” she says.
“I loved to bike around this part of
town where people were out on their
front porches, on the street, playing
ball. People just seemed more alive.”
She was especially drawn to the 1910
townhouse on the corner of Chestnut
and Forest — yup, the one she now
owns — where generations of the
Calabria family lived above their
Italian deli and restaurant. “My heart
would skip a beat when I went by,”
she says. “It had a sense of place that
was very much a part of the life here.”