The World Famous “Reuben’s”
The World Famous “Reuben’s” 6 East 58th Street, Just Off Fifth Avenue, New York. This is the Reuben’s “From a Sandwich to a National Institution”—About Which You’ve Read and Heard so Much. Here’s Where Celebrities, From Every Walk of Life, Foregather. Published by The Eagle Post Card View Co., N. Y., ca. 1940.
Created by the German-born restaurateur Arnold Reuben (1883–1970), who came to the United States as a boy with his parents, and famed for its sandwiches and, above all, its cheesecake, Reuben’s moved into its new premises at 6 East 58th Street in 1935. In 1965, Reuben sold the business and retired to Florida where he died in 1970.
As food writer Clementine Paddleford wrote in 1949:
“The king of sandwiches, the sandwich of kings—yours day or night … that’s Reuben’s Restaurant … That’s the home of the original double-deck sandwich. There, too, its creator Arnold Reuben, the sandwich architect, who it is rumored erects these skyscraper affairs by the aid of scaffolding. …
There are forty-four of the supers on the Reuben supper menu and all of them devised by Mr. Reuben and designed and named for celebrities who frequent the place in the late hours when most of New York has tucked itself into bed. Here’s an Al Jolson Tartar sandwich, which should be called Tarzan, made as it is of raw meat, raw egg, raw onion. …
Today Reuben’s have twelve sandwich men working in three shifts. Arnold Reuben himself trains every man hired. Few sandwich makers, he tells us, have a love for the work. They have to be taught to do an artistic job; to butter to the very edge, not to overdo the dressing, otherwise no diner in the restaurant would be safe from the flying mayonnaise. Arnold Reuben doesn’t claim his sandwiches to be leak-proof, but with plenty of butter around the edge, the flanks are fairly well secured. …
Reuben’s cheesecake is the only one in the world we ever heard of that needs a social secretary to keep its dates straight. That cake’s client list is kept by card file, more than 1,000 names with addresses as far apart as Honolulu, Paris, Bermuda, London. … Nine times in ten the cheesecake haters leave with an undying yen for Reuben’s creme variety. That happened with Judy Garland.”
