Tuesday, December 7, 2010. Birthday Girl Gets Everything She Wanted. Ruth's Chris, Too. It's Mary Ann's birthday. She began it by having brunch with Jude in Studio City, a part of Los Angeles, where he now lives in a big house that Mary Ann loves. She wants to buy one like it and move to the West Coast. Through hsi whole life, both Mary Ann and I have been jealous of Jude, for different reasons. He's done all the things we wanted to do, but never did. But I just wanted to be a Boy Scout. Mary Ann wants to live in Los Angeles in a house like Jude's, with its overlook of the valley.
After bidding her golden boy goodbye until Christmas (so far, far away!) Mary Ann took a plane home. The New Orleans side of her family (Mary Leigh and me) met her at Ruth's Chris Steak House for her big birthday dinner. This is MA's favorite restaurant lately. This is the third time we've been here in two months.
I made the reservation online, and added a request that was odd enough that it constituted a test of how much personal service can be had by reserving electronically. Just after we gave our orders to the server, there it was: a pair of crab cakes with candles stuck in them, exactly as I requested. Mary Ann is not big on birthday cake (unless one of her children made it), but she loves crab cakes. Especially the sizzling kind at Ruth's Chris. She was delighted by my pulling this off. Not enough to make her forget my monumental screw-up on her fiftieth, but good enough to keep her happy tonight.
Ruth's has been running some complete dinner specials for $39 and $49 lately. These include everything the girls want: small filets mignon, a salad, a side dish. This is not the Ruth's Chris experience for me. I want the Prime beef. A sirloin strip. Or that porterhouse we had last time we were here: fabulous.
But tonight the veal chop sounded good. Ruth Fertel told me over lunch once that her personal favorite of all her menu items was the veal chop. The waitress (a nice young woman from New York) said that the chop in the $49 table d'hote dinner was identical to the one on the a la carte side. Sold! This allowed us to get a real overload of side dishes. They began with a new salad of asparagus and hearts of palm, plus enough greens to make it a bigger stack than I expected. Elsewhere on the table were a wedge salad, fresh-cut fries (much better than the shoestrings last time), creamed spinach, seared Brussels sprouts, and mashed potatoes.
Mary Ann made an entree of the crab-tini, a martini glass full of lumps of crabmeat from who knows where. There's no denying its goodness, though, or that of the remoulade sauce and vinaigrette that sparks it up. It certainly is eye-popping.
The veal chop was not quite as good as the one I had last week at Le foret, but very good. They left the fat islands in place, making it resemble a bone-in ribeye. Of course, that's what a veal chop is--just smaller and younger. I like the herbal garnish and the sizzling butter, too.
The manager of the restaurant asked me for advice on Kansas City. He's moving to the Ruth's Chris there. I'm sure it's a busy outlet. But the Ruth's Chris in Metairie is the de-facto flagship of the chain--the oldest of the 100-plus restaurants. Is that a promotion?
Ruth's Chris Steak House. Metairie: 3633 Veterans Blvd. 504-888-3600.
