Why you're safe at home at McNally's in Chestnut Hill

We always hear about the shiny, new food companies. The Spot is a series about the Philadelphia area's more established establishments and the people behind them.

When you eat at McNally's, you feel like family. Fourth-generation owners Anne and Meg McNally run their Chestnut Hill tavern with a straightforward friendliness that's as old-fashioned as it is refreshing. There's no way to prove it, but that neighborly attitude might be one of the reasons a Schmitter always tastes better there than at the ballpark.

Most ingredients of the famous sandwich remain the same no matter where it's made: the Conshohocken Bakery rolls, the Hatfield salami, the Kraft American cheese, the thick slice of tomato, the thinly shaved onions. Differences at the stadium stands are only two: the steak (it's presliced) and the sauce (it's premixed). The changes were made as grudging concessions to volume: the Citizens Bank Park and Lincoln Financial Field counters easily sell 500 to 1,000 Schmitters a game, while the tiny original kitchen turns out around 50 a day.

The tavern has been known for its sandwiches since 1921, when Anne and Meg's great-grandmother, Rose McNally, launched it in a rented corrugated shack on Germantown Avenue. Her husband drove the Route 23 trolley, and before McNally's Quick Lunch, there was nowhere for drivers to get a bite near the end-of-the-line turnaround at the top of the hill.

Soon, other workers in the neighborhood started taking advantage of Rose's cooking, and in 1927 the McNallys bought a small building and moved their shop across the street, adding a liquor license when Prohibition was repealed.

When Rose's son Hugh took over from his mother, he solidified the status as the go-to shot-and-beer bar for Chestnut Hill's working class. The dark interior had no clocks and no phones, and that's just how Hugh and his hard-drinking clientele liked it. It wasn't until the late 1950s - when third-generation proprietor Hugh McNally Jr. got involved - that women were allowed inside at all.

Hugh Jr. transformed the alehouse into a family friendly joint, and expanded the food offerings. Like his grandmother Rose, he was a good cook, and had a special knack for sandwiches - as evidenced by his invention of the Schmitter. His five children all grew up in the place, but when it came time to pass the baton, he knew his daughter Anne was the right one for the job.

Anne worked alongside her father from 1979 on, and officially took the reins in 1994, enlisting her older sister Meg to help. Ten years later, when the Phillies were about to commence their inaugural season at Citizens Bank Park, the McNallys got an offer to open a Schmitter concession there. Anne wasn't sure she had the bandwidth to do it, but her husband, Joe Pie, decided he wanted to make it happen. It was a smash hit, and led to the launch of a second Schmitter stand at Lincoln Financial Field.

Early one morning, in between icing the day's cakes and setting the restaurant's eight tables, the McNally sisters took a moment to chat about their family's 94-year-old business.

Did you ever get to meet your great-grandmother, Rose?

Never got to meet her, but we have a lot of photos. She and my great-grandfather came to America when my grandfather was around 5 years old. They lived in Port Richmond, but my great-grandfather drove the 23 line, and the tracks end right here. He would come home and tell his wife, "Gosh, there's nothing out there." Nowhere to go to the bathroom, and nowhere to eat or drink. So she decided to open a store.

It wasn't common for women to start businesses back then; was it?

No, and actually, even though she made all the food, she didn't actually work in the establishment, which also sold cigars, gum, candy and cakes. It probably also sold alcohol during Prohibition - we have a search warrant for the place from 1925. There's a story about my grand-uncle John, that they once gave him $300 to go to Canada and get booze, but instead he went and spent it all in Atlantic City - he was an alcoholic.

After Prohibition they got a liquor license?

Yeah, my grandfather didn't drink that much, but he ran the place for hardcore drinkers. There was no clock, and no phone. My grandfather didn't want people to know what time of day it was, and didn't want their wives to be able to reach them. It wasn't until Meg was born, in 1957, that my dad convinced his father to let a pay phone be installed, in case of emergencies.

Has the decor stayed the same?

It has been the same since the '60s. After the pay phone, my dad finally convinced my grandfather that other changes needed to be made, because business was slow - all the regular customers were dying. They took out the tin ceiling, and added some windows at the front, turned it into what you see today. We still use the same tables my dad put in. And the bar itself is the original one that got delivered in 1921 - we still have the sales slip. It says "One oak counter: $172." Which I guess was a lot of money, back then.

What's your first memory of this place?

We used to be closed on Sundays, and everyone would come in and clean. They'd always give us kids flashlights and tell us to help by looking under the bar, because there was change there. Years later, we learned our grandpop had dropped the change there for us on purpose, just to keep us distracted.

How did you end up in charge, Anne?

For our senior project at high school, we had to work at a business, so I worked here. I pointed the wall downstairs - I thought maybe we could expand the dining room there, although it never happened - and did every job here. I learned how to make martinis, I learned how to cook. After I graduated, I went to school part-time for restaurant and hospitality management, and I was like, "Well, everything I'm doing here is just what I do at work every day."

You went smoke-free before it was a legal requirement, right?

Yes, in 1998. My dad had retired 4 years earlier, but he was still always around. I was pregnant with my first child, and he saw how sick the smoke was making me. He was like, "Let's go smoke-free; let's just do it." I was so sick, I couldn't even argue with him, but I said, "OK, but if we don't send you a rent check next month, you'll know why."

So we closed like we always do over Fourth of July weekend, and when we reopened, we didn't allow smoking. Some people griped, but they go over it. The city loved it - Nutter came out to see us, and asked us to come talk to City Council, because that was his big thing back then, trying to get the smoking ban passed.

There are a bunch of variations on the Schmitter's origin story - what's the true tale?

It was around 1966, and my dad [Hugh McNally Jr.] was running the place. There was a customer, Dennis Krenich, who worked at the [Chestnut Hill] hospital. He was on night shift, so he finished at 11 and would come by afterwards. One night he said to my dad, "You know, do you have any sauce - like pizza sauce - that you can put on my steak?" My dad didn't have pizza sauce, but he said to himself, "But I have ketchup, and I have mayonnaise, and a little bit of relish, and a little tabasco, and a little Worcestershire..."

Now, my dad could make a sandwich out of anything, and he's good at it. Put 10 roast beef sandwiches in front of me and I could tell you which one was his. So that night he threw one together for Dennis, adding whatever he could find, grilling it all together and putting it on a roll with that sauce he whipped up. And Dennis licked the plate.

He came back the next night and asked for the sandwich again, and then several nights in a row, until it became a thing. For a while, it was called the Googie, because that was my dad's nickname. But he hated his nickname - he thought Dennis' nickname was better. Dennis always drank Schmidt's beer, so he was known as Schmitter. So my dad started calling the sandwich that, instead.

How did it end up at Citizens Bank Park?

That's because of my husband, Joe. When we first got married, he had his own career and job. He knew some people who were building the new Phillies stadium, and so he asked me what I thought about opening there. I said, "If you want to do it, that's fine, but I don't have the time or the energy." So we did the interview thing, and took our product down. But we never heard back...until February, two months before the stadium was going to open. Someone else had backed out at the last minute.

So we were going back and forth, and then one day - I don't know why - I mentioned it to Dawn Stensland-Mendte, like, "Oh, we might be opening up at the Phillies." Of course she told her husband, who sent a camera crew over. We hadn't even told my dad yet!

What did your dad think?

He was skeptical at first. He said, "C'mon, how many sandwiches do you think you can sell - a hundred?" I told him they were talking 400 to 500 a night.

Did that figure hold true?

Until about two years ago, we averaged about 800 to 1,000 sandwiches a night [at Citizens Bank Park]. And then, attendance just fell off, so the number is lower now.

Is the stand run by Aramark?

Yes, but we can designate people to run it; they just become Aramark employees. That's at the Phillies. At the Linc, we're a subcontractor instead of a licensee, so we run the whole thing. But Joe is really hands-on about all of it.

When he had to find a new supplier for the meat - we started out trying to slice it daily like we do at the tavern, but that just didn't work with the volume - so when he had to find someone to supply it, he went to like a million little meat companies and we had taste test after taste test. Same with the sauce - he got Helen's Pure Foods in Cheltenham to make a recipe just for us. And he got the stadium to start using Conshohocken Bakery rolls.

People always say, "Oh, the Schmitters are better here than at the ballpark." And we're like, well, they are. We make 50 instead of 500. And the special ingredient my dad always put in - a whole lot of love.

McNally's Tavern

8634 Germantown Ave., 215-247-9736

Hours: 11 a.m to 11 p.m. Monday to Saturday, noon to 8 p.m. Sunday