Tuesday, November 24. Jude Is Coming! Ruth's Chris. Jude Is Here! Jude arrives from Los Angeles tonight--after midnight. He had to do that because his last classes are today (the ostensible reason) and because he's working on a movie that allegedly needs his personal attention (the real reason). Mary Ann and I drove into town together, and on the way over she asked me to figure a spot in Metairie where we could have dinner while Mary Leigh went to a birthday party of eight girls at Houston's. (A perfect place for teenagers.) I suggested Ruth's Chris. She wheeled around and said, "Really? I'd love to go there." I knew she'd love to go there. Everybody loves to go there.
MA was miffed when I arrived. She said it took too long for me to get there. But it really does require about forty-five minutes to pack up, get out of the radio's downtown building, collect my car in the garage two blocks away, and drive out to Metairie. Both the Marys get bent out of shape about this allaeged laggard performance every time, even after dozens of iterations of this routine. I think they want me to use teleportation.
Mary Ann was fascinated by the crowd at Ruth's Chris. "This is the place my parents would go whenever they celebrated anything big," she said. "That's the function of this place for a lot of people." It was certainly true this night. The place was full. Two people with such an occasion--balloons and flowers, too--were near us, at a poor deuce next to a post. They were African Americans. But the manager was, too. Maybe they arrived when that was the only table open. I still felt bad about it, and considered giving them our comfortable four-top against the wall so they could celebrate in better style. After all, we were just there for a bite to eat.
"I don't think the host gave you this table because they know you," Mary Ann said. She's sensitive to such favoritism. "In fact, I get the feeling they're mad at you about something." Don't know what that would be.
Ruth's corporate is pushing a dinner that starts with an appetizer, moves to a filet mignon with shrimp (or a couple of other choices), and wraps with a dessert combo for $40. The standard Ruth's Chris meal runs more like $75; the place didn't make its reputation by being a bargain. I wonder why they're cutting back now. I hope not many people ask whether that filet mignon is Prime beef.
We started with salads. Mary Ann stayed with the $40 program all the way. A little filet with a few big shrimp--that had her name all over it. I got the best single-serving steak in the house, the unarguably Prime, man-sized sirloin strip. On a scale of ten, it was an eight and a half. Sizzling and all that. Creamed spinach. Lyonnaise potatoes, made with what looked like fried half-moons, a short-cut way of doing that. The Crescent City does it better. Heck, I do it better. But not bad. Two glasses of BV proprietary red. All this was served by an Asian waiter who was cooperative and fun.
Halfway through the meal, and ever since, Mary Ann has talked about how much she enjoyed this dinner. Maybe that was because, for once, we were in absolutely no hurry. Mary Leigh didn't show up until dessert time, and even then Mary Ann had until midnight to kill. I would have volunteered to pick Jude up, but I knew that she wanted to get the first possible glimpse of her golden son's face. I almost wanted to be there to see the look on her face when she saw him, because I knew something about Jude she didn't: he's grown a beard.
Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Metairie: 3633 Veterans Blvd. 504-888-3600. Steak.
