#52 Rulloff's: A journey into collegetown

The Story: Mr. Edward Rulloff, a genius philologist and sometime Ithaca resident in the mid-nineteenth century, was also a serial killer.  He killed his wife and daughter, among many others, dumped his victim’s bodies in Cayuga Lake and served parts of his sentences in the Ithaca jail.  He was finally caught in Binghamton and executed in the last public hanging in NY, in 1871.  A hundred years later, Rulloff’s Restaurant and Bar opened its doors in Collegetown.  Too soon?

Edward Rulloff: serial killer and master chef?

 Rulloff’s has been around since the 1970’s, faithfully dishing up hamburgers and cheese fries to drunk Cornell students.  They’re also known for their $2 pitchers of Rolling Rock.  It’s a classy establishment, to say the least.

I’ve been to the bar section of Rulloff’s many times with vet school friends, and for a while it was our class’s gathering place after momentous occasions like finishing Block 1 or Thursday, but until I started looking up all the restaurants in Ithaca I didn’t realize they served food.  I sort of wish I had never had to find out.

I most recently dined at Rulloff’s a few nights ago, when some friends and I went for an early beer and I hadn’t yet eaten dinner.  It was the perfect opportunity to try a new restaurant, and on a positive note, the kitchen was open until 10 pm.  But that’s about where the positives ended.  I ordered a turkey sandwich with onion rings for the table, and a Magic Hat.  They hit the mark with the beer, but you’d think after ordering a turkey sandwich I would have gotten a turkey sandwich.  What did I actually get?  A cheeseburger.

Okay, so the waiter/bartender wasn’t so good at understanding the words “turkey sandwich.” But that wouldn’t have been such a problem if they had just decided that I didn’t want the turkey sandwich because of how amazingly delicious the hamburgers were.  Actually what it tasted like was that the kitchen was closed, and the only thing they could find lying around was a three day old cheeseburger they stole from the nearby Cornell dining hall.  Sadly, I ate almost all of it, because by the time they actually brought out my meal the bar was so packed with undergrads that it was impossible to even make it up there to let them know that a cheeseburger is NOT a turkey sandwich. 

Wilder Brain Collection (thanks cornell.edu)

Edward Rulloff persists on, and not only through his eponymous restaurant.  His brain is on display in Uris Hall, right here on campus, as part of the Wilder Brain Collection.  And I bet it would taste better than that cheeseburger.