December 15, 2005 Issue                                                              

©2005 The Chestnut Hill Local

Cancer survivor an anti-smoking crusader
Hiller rarely visits his own popular restaurant
by LEN LEAR

Most restaurant owners, if they’re being completely candid with you, will admit that the restaurant is their master, not the other way around. It’s their family, their mistress, their obsession, their drill sergeant. It’s not unusual for a restaurant owner to go several days before catching a fleeting glimpse of his wife (or husband) and children.

Fourteen-hour days, six or seven-day weeks are routine. Having a few minutes to watch TV or read a newspaper is the equivalent of a two-week vacation for non-restaurateurs. If the owner is also the chef, he may get up at 5 a.m. to go down to the Food Distribution Center in South Philly to buy some fresh produce or seafood. And even then, he might not leave his restaurant until 2 a.m. Divorces and alienation from children are as commonplace as chicken and pasta dishes on the menu.

Then there’s Chris Ryan. The jolly 60-year-old, long-time Chestnut Hill resident (25 years on Seminole Avenue) stands out in his industry like a kosher deli in Damascus. In 1988 Ryan opened Bridgid’s, a quintessential Irish pub and restaurant, at 726 N. 24th St. in Fairmount, but he spends less time there than most of his regular customers. He almost needs to show a credit card and driver’s license to eat at his own restaurant.

“I love this place, but frankly I don’t come here very often,” admitted Chris. “I’ll come here for dinner an average of once a month, and the waiter might not even recognize me. Recently, at the end of dinner, the waiter gave me a check, and I told him I don’t pay here. He asked me why, and I said, ‘I’m Chris Ryan. Go talk to the manager, and he’ll explain it to you.’”

Ryan, who was born and raised in Fairmount (his dad was a policeman), owns a very successful real estate brokerage firm in Fairmount, and he owns several rental properties there as well.

“This (Bridgid’s) is a unique operation,” explained Ryan, “because, unlike almost all other restaurateurs, I don’t really need to make a profit here. That affords me the luxury of making decisions because they are the right things to do. I don’t have to worry about their economic impact.”

Case in point: in the 1990s four people close to Chris died of smoking-related illnesses. His parents, both chain smokers, died of emphysema and an aneurysm, respectively, while in their mid-50s. As a result, in 1998 Ryan decided to turn Bridgid’s — both the first-floor and second-floor dining rooms and the bar area — into a completely non-smoking restaurant.

“Everyone tried to dissuade me,” said Chris. “They said you can’t have an Irish pub without smoking. My manager said, ‘You’ll lose most of your friends and customers. How long are you planning to try this experiment?’ I said that’s tough if we lose customers. I told him this was not an experiment. This was my permanent decision, even if my regular customers stopped coming ... I was sure myself that we’d take a hit financially, but it didn’t matter in the least. It was a moral decision.

“But then a funny thing happened. The first week after we went all non-smoking, business was up by 10 percent, and it continued to grow after that. We did lose some smoking customers, but we gained many more non-smokers who previously would not come in here because of the smoke. That was an eye-opener for a businessman. We recently had three pregnant women who all came in for dinner by themselves independently. They did not know each other. In each case, they came in here in part because it is all non-smoking.”

Ryan is currently lobbying to help pass the bill introduced by City Councilman Michael Nutter that would virtually eliminate smoking from restaurants in the city. On Nov. 17, the day of the 29th annual American Cancer Society Great American Smokeout, Chris held a press conference at his restaurant to urge passage of the anti-smoking legislation.

Ryan pointed out that each year, about 438,000 Americans die from tobacco use. Nearly one in every five deaths is related to smoking. Cigarettes, said the Chestnut Hill resident, kill more Americans than alcohol, car accidents, suicide, AIDS, homicide and illegal drugs combined. Even secondhand smoke, he indicated, contains more than 60 chemical compounds known or suspected to cause cancer.

Ryan’s decision to snuff out the butts was also affected by his own medical history. Shortly after he opened Bridgid’s in 1988, he was diagnosed with leukemia. In April, 1990, he had a bone marrow transplant operation in Hahnemann Hospital. The bone marrow was donated by his brother, Budd.

“It was not painful,” recalls Ryan, “but basically you wind up with no immune system, so you have no resistance to anything. The new bone marrow tries to reject everything, and you wind up getting every sickness imaginable. I survived both because of my medication and in spite of my medication.”

Two years after the bone marrow transplant, Ryan was near death. His doctor urged him to go to Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh to try out a new experimental drug that had shown promise in cases like his. “I said goodbye to my children,” recalls Chris, “knowing full well that I might never see them again

“I stopped taking all the drugs I had been taking and started taking the experimental drug in Pittsburgh. The doctors told me it was the only possible drug that could save my life. After one week I went home, and amazingly, I had no problems after that. I was so lucky.

“Tests showed a precipitous drop in bilirubin (a reddish yellow pigment occurring in bile, blood, urine and gallstones), so we walked out of the hospital and left ... The leukemia was gone, but some people still die of the aftermath. I was lucky there, too ... I’m leaving out the religious part. I’m not a believer, but I’m not a non-believer, either. The fact is I really don’t know why I was cured or what did it.”

Before becoming a restaurateur, Chris graduated from La Salle College with a degree in accounting and then taught accounting and business law from 1967 to 1985 at St. Maria Goretti High School in South Philadelphia. Starting in 1975 he also sold real estate on a part-time basis and was a waiter/bartender in the summertime. As a result, he decided to open a restaurant.

The property that now houses Bridgid’s “was a toilet of a bar that hadn’t been swept in 20 years. When I bought it in 1988, there were four homeless guys who would sleep in cars and then come in at 9 a.m. to get drunk. There had not been any food cooked in the bar for 20 years, and it was a huge undertaking to make the place decent.”

Ryan offered a partnership in Bridgid’s (named for Chris’ daughter) to a friend from Uruguay, Alfredo Staricco, who was a waiter at a restaurant called Pyrenees. “I brought him here and asked him to be my partner. He said the place was way too small, and it would never work. I then opened the restaurant on a Saturday, and we had 100 customers in here. The next day Alfredo called me and said he changed his mind. He has been my partner for the whole 17 years, and he is also my chef.”

At the beginning, the dining room at Bridgid’s was formal, with linen tablecloths and upscale food and prices. The bar was usually crowded every night, but the dining room was only populated on weekends. Thus, Chris tore down the wall that separated the bar from the dining room, and he lowered prices dramatically on the menu. Ever since then, both the bar and the restaurant have been beehive busy most nights.

Bridgid’s is known for its great beer selection — about 100 in all — and for its low food prices. Appetizers like jalapeno shrimp, beer-batter chicken and crab wontons are just $5 each, and entrees like Cajun tilapia, tough steak, honey-fried chicken and spinach gnocchi with pesto or pomodoro are just $10 each. The highest priced starter is $7, and the highest priced entree is $18. The quality and quantity of most dishes are very impressive.

When we were there talking to Chris, a young man named Matt, who works for the Girard Home News, a neighborhood newspaper, stopped by and commented, “The food was great, as always.” A while later, a gentleman named Dave Heller who said he works for WHYY-TV stopped to say to Ryan, “The food is fabulous, and even better is the non-smoking policy.”

For recreation, Chris and his wife, Aileen, play golf at Flourtown Country Club and Sandy Run Country Club. Aileen, who was once an emergency room nurse at Chestnut Hill Hospital, now works for an area pharmaceutical company. The Ryans have three children: Chris, Jr., 23, of Fairmount, who works in real estate with his dad; Bridgid, 21, a senior at Penn State majoring in Japanese, and Kevin, 20, a sophomore at St. Joseph’s University who has a rock band and hopes to be a rock star. Chris has two brothers, Budd, 65, of Roxborough, and Tim, 62, of Fairmount, who both work in his real estate business.

Another important contributor to the restaurant is Pollux Daniel, of Haiti, a sous chef who has been at Bridgid’s since 1994. For more information, call 215-232-3232.