The Pub says it’s closing for a summer-long renovation, and it’s a hearth-stopping moment for some customers

Over the last six decades, few things have changed at the Pub in Pennsauken, one of the largest restaurants in the region. The signature steaks are grilled in the six open hearths lining the rear of the cavernous restaurant, which is done up like a medieval banquet room festooned with war flags and swords beneath wooden beams. Two salad bars, each anchored by bowls of iceberg lettuce, are packed with 35 items, including wedges of cheese you can cut yourself. The bar and lounge, with its Naugahyde bar stools and various shades of brown, screams 1976.

The Pub, which opened in 1951 on what was then known as Airport Circle and was rebuilt in the early 1960s after a fire, will close from July 1 through Sept. 19 for renovations. It needs a new roof, kitchen equipment, paint, and carpets, said owner David Gelman, who estimated the price tag at nearly $250,000.

The roof alone will cost about $100,000, he said, and the main floor will require more than 1,300 square yards of carpeting.

Reaction on social media was swift and pointed. “LEAVE IT ALONE!!!” wrote one commenter on the South Jersey Food Scene Facebook group, “Perhaps they will lighten it up a bit. Always been so dark inside,” wrote another, prompting responses “that’s a good thing.”

Relax, Gelman said.

When the Pub reopens Sept. 20, customers should not notice much, if anything, new. This work is in no way a dining room renovation: It will still resemble a Tolkienesque wedding hall.

The Pub has previously closed for a week or two, but this will be the first extended shutdown since Gelman’s father, Marc, and several partners — who have since left — bought the restaurant nearly 25 years ago. Because the restaurant needed to close during the work, Gelman said, summer was the obvious season, because many customers are on vacation.

Gelman said the 175 full- and part-time employees will be furloughed during the shutdown and can collect unemployment. The shutdown also will be a big hit to the Pub’s suppliers, who also serve the company’s related restaurants: Library II in Voorhees, as well as Rocco’s at the Brick and Sycamore Grill, both in Newtown.

Gelman said the Pub’s beef bill is $20,000 to $30,000 a week. On a typical Saturday, when 700 to 1,000 customers cycle through, the restaurant will roast 10 to 15 prime ribs, the best seller, each weighing 12 to 15 pounds, Gelman said. Following prime rib in popularity is a dish called the Carpet Bagger, which places a jumbo crab cake atop a 9-ounce filet mignon; it’s served with potatoes, vegetable, and hollandaise sauce.

The shutdown will also prompt a top-to-bottom cleanup of the restaurant, which spans 24,000 feet — so vast that it has its own dry cleaning plant in the basement to handle the linens.

“A lot of people have been going to the Pub since their parents and their grandparents have taken them,” Gelman said. “We want to keep that going for generations to come.”