Near the Slide Mountain trailhead and Big Indian Wilderness, a bright-red barn houses Ralph’s Bar and Bowling, a lively gathering place for residents, tourists, and pizza lovers.
Inside, cowboy decor, taxidermied animals, and cow skulls line the walls and shelves. A vintage manual bowling alley sits near the entrance. Live music and dancing spill downstairs from the second-floor game room. The bar bustles as guests lounge by the pool outside.
In the back, beneath a small sign reading “Tiny Pizza Kitchen,” is Auggie Russo, a chef and neo-Neapolitan pizza maker from New York City. Russo began making pizzas at a Brooklyn pop-up in 2021 and drew widespread attention two years later when his inventive pies earned a glowing review from New York Times critic Pete Wells.
Russo operated the pop-up from several kitchens, bringing his pizzas to different audiences around the city. His recipe for candied hot chilies was later published in Evie McGee Colbert and Stephen Colbert’s cookbook, “Does This Taste Funny?: Recipes Our Family Loves.”
In 2025, Russo’s friend and former boss, New York City chef and restaurant owner Matthew Hamilton, became executive chef of the Dining Room at Urban Cowboy Lodge, a cowboy-themed resort in Oliverea, a hamlet of Shandaken. Russo followed his friend to the Catskills and took over the kitchen at Ralph’s.
Russo’s kitchen is covered from wall to ceiling with art, memorabilia, photographs, and other objects that inspire him. The rumble of bowling balls and crash of pins mix with Russo’s music of choice for the day, rock ’n’ roll, and the sounds of pies sliding in and out of the hulking pizza oven in the corner.
“It’s like a college dorm room, if it was lived in by a 57-year-old,” Russo said. “It’s all my weird shit.”
Russo created Ralph’s menu, which combines dorm-room experimentation with farm-fresh ingredients. His pizzas include classic marinara and margherita pies, along with more unusual offerings such as the “Miss Betty White,” made with preserved lemon, dried rose, asparagus, goat cheese, pomegranate, and other ingredients.
“This is the only time that I have access to ingredients in such tremendous abundance,” Russo said. “It’s all pink and magnificent.”
The menu changes frequently, often based on what regulars bring from their gardens.
“I have regulars who have really beautiful gardens, who show up with armloads of stuff,” Russo said.
Customers bring edible flowers and herbs, and Russo also receives ingredients from nearby organizations, including Frost Valley YMCA. He enjoys the challenge of incorporating the gifts into pizzas, sandwiches, seafood dishes, and other menu items.
“I love my regulars, I really do,” he said. “I’ve been to some of their homes. I know them all by name. I know their dogs. I know what they eat. They’re all groovy.”
Ralph’s is open from 3 to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 3 to 11 p.m. Friday through Sunday. Thursdays tend to draw regulars, while tourists fill the bar on weekends.
Russo’s menu draws partly from memories of his mother’s cooking and partly from fast food. One of his best-known creations is a Big Mac pizza, which he said tastes like the McDonald’s burger.
“I want to eat stuff that I remember fondly from my childhood, or maybe even misremember a little bit from my childhood,” he said. “Shit that my mom made that I’m just stealing 100%, and some stuff is weird stuff that just kind of comes out of nowhere.”
The kitchen is open to guests. A small table with two chairs sits across from the oven, allowing diners to eat and talk with Russo as he works.
“I invite people to eat there often,” Russo said. “I very much like to have as much connection with the guests as I possibly can.”
Before becoming Ralph’s, the property was the Slide Mountain Inn, a modest, white-painted lodging that served a German menu four days a week each summer.
Ralph Combe was the inn’s third-generation owner. His family operated it for more than 90 years, enduring a period when many family-owned lodgings struggled and successive innkeepers came and went.
“The history of new innkeepers in this area hasn’t been that good,” Combe said. “We were a family-owned mom-and-pop operation.”
Combe sold the inn to Urban Cowboy in 2024 as he approached retirement with no family member prepared to continue the business. Urban Cowboy, which also operates properties in Nashville and Denver, announced plans for Ralph’s in early 2025. The bar and restaurant opened soon afterward.
Although the property has changed considerably, Combe remains a regular and is pleased with what Russo has done with the menu.
“I think the pizza’s great,” Combe said. “It’s been interesting seeing someone make all these unusual pies.”
Photography by Roy Gumpel for The Overlook.
Kyle Bredberg is a contributing reporter. You can reach him at kyle@theoverlooknews.com.
