The Rallo Family Is Turning Red Bank’s Abandoned Gas Station Into an Italian Cafe
Everybody who drives into Red Bank knows the corner. The old Bridge Avenue Gas station at 187 Riverside Avenue has sat empty for about six years, roof caved in, paint chipped, asphalt cracked, right at the gateway into town. Starting soon, it becomes the most interesting restaurant project in Monmouth County.
Victor Rallo Jr. and his son Jake are turning the station into Rallo Alimentari & Focacceria, an all day Italian cafe modeled on the cafe culture of Milan. The news broke nationally this week in People magazine, which featured the project because the family includes influencer and author Eli Rallo, but for Monmouth County this is a local story years in the making.
Victor has run Birravino, the Italian restaurant next door, since 1998, and he has wanted the gas station the entire time. Jake says his father spent some 15 years trying to buy it, watching it sit dilapidated while he ran the restaurant alongside it. The purchase was announced in February 2025 after years of negotiations, the borough Planning Board approved converting the station into a restaurant that April, and the family has been designing it ever since with architecture firm Mancini Duffy.
The concept runs all day the way a Milan cafe does. Mornings start with espresso, cappuccinos and house made laminated pastries, the croissant style program Jake will lead himself. Afternoons shift to freshly baked focaccia sandwiches built on Italian staples like cured meats, mozzarella, pesto and ricotta. Evenings, the room transitions into a restaurant with seasonal small plates and an exclusively Italian beverage program built around wine and aperitivo, negronis and Campari included.
The room itself keeps the building's bones in the story. Plans call for about 30 seats inside with a Milanese look, marble, wood and Italian tile, plus an open kitchen where you can watch mozzarella being made and pastries coming out of the oven. A large garage door will open the space up to the outside, a nod to the station's first life, and outdoor seating gets custom fire pits. Even the tall corner sign survives: the old Bridge Avenue Gas panel comes down and the restaurant's name goes up under a Welcome to Red Bank panel.
The Rallos are not newcomers taking a flyer. Birravino is the family's 40 year old restaurant, and the group also runs Undici in Rumson, Pastavino and the River Pointe Inn. Victor's parents came from Italy, and he spent years traveling the country filming a television series about Italian food and wine, which is exactly the experience he wants to bring home with this cafe.
Construction is expected to get underway in the coming months, and the family is targeting an early 2027 opening, with January as the projected goal. Exact hours and the final menu are still being worked out, and the sandwich lineup has not been locked. What is locked is the corner. After six years of nothing, Red Bank's gateway is getting a cafe worth arriving to.
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