Friday, September 24, 2010. Dinner Foreplay. Plenty Of Space At Ruth's Chris. We enjoyed a good deal of radio activity today. Why today and not other days, I'll never know. Nothing I said seemed more compelling than usual. But the calls kept rolling in, each with its own subject. Just the way I like it.
One running theme concerned the fate of La Famiglia, the Italian restaurant operated by T.J. Qutob on Oaklawn just off Veterans. It closed a few weeks ago. Now that it's gone, people who never called to say how good it was while it was open call to lament its passing. The building is under deep renovation--enough th require a big construction dumpster outside.
What the place needs even more is a bigger parking lot. When the lot fills, there's no place else to park--not on the street, not anywhere nearby. One caller said that the owners of the building will buy the house next door and will tear it down. Another guy called to say it wasn't true, and then launched into a defense of the neighbors' fight to keep the area whole.
The saddest call on this subject came from a lady who had just bought a gift certificate to La Famiglia. She tried to use it at Maple Street Café, but although the owners of the two places are brothers, they're not the same business. If it had been me, I would have accepted the certificate just to make a new customer. But maybe this opens a bag of legal worms. I say it's a bad idea to buy gift certificates except for the most solid of restaurants.
Mary Ann wanted dinner. I suggested we go to Impastato's. She asked the usual questions. Why there? You go there all the time. Where do you need to go for an article? Where have you not been in awhile? The answer to those questions is a long list of restaurants she doesn't find appealing. At the end of it, I ask, "Well, where do you want to go, dear?" This is where we ought to begin any discussion about dinner, because we always wind up there.
This time her answer was Ruth's Chris. Fine! I say. Are you sure that's okay? she says. Yes, I say. We don't have to go there if you need to somewhere else, she says. Wherever you want to go is where I want to go, I say.
Maybe this parley is a variation of foreplay. We can't seem to have dinner without it. Well, we were lucky on a Friday night to find that Ruth's Chris had a few open tables. And Mike Fusilier, the general manager and former waiter at LeRuth's, was at the front door. We got the regular customer treatment and a great table.
Mary Ann was delighted to be there. She finds Ruth's Chris both glamorous and nostalgic. It was her parents' default restaurant for special occasions. That cachet remains in her mind. Why not? My equivalent is Antoine's, although not because my parents ever took me there (or anywhere else) for dinner. They never set foot in Antoine's until I brought them there. I got the Antoine's bug during a dinner there when I was nineteen. I thought that if I could eat in a grand establishment like that on my own nickel, I must really have arrived.
At Ruth's Chris, we began with a Manhattan and a glass of Pinot Grigio. The latter had Mary Ann woozy. She's the cheapest tipsy I know. Half a glass of wine, and she's loopy. She almost never goes beyond that. Good designated driver (sort of).
She got onion soup and a crab cake (both above), and said that those would fill her up. For me, the tomato and onion salad with blue cheese and remoulade sauce (below). Better than I remembered. Or maybe I'd just never had it before. I will have it again.
Then a sirloin strip, the great steak at Ruth's Chris, always Prime. (It's not just me saying that. It was Ruth Fertel's opinion, too.) As always, I began eating the steak on the wrong end. That made it better and better as I ate, making it more and more likely that I would pack away the entire monster, while Mary Ann told me again and again that I shouldn't eat so much food.
I did eat so much food, and a bread pudding beyond that. But I had no real dinner last night, and just my usual skeletal meals earlier in this day. I'm a man, for goodness sake!
Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Metairie: 3633 Veterans Blvd.. 504-888-3600.
