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Night 5: Ruth's Chris Steak House
I live several blocks away from a Ruth's Chris Steak
House but have never been inside. It always seems full
of tourists and big, bloated conventioneers, so it never
appealed to me. The night I decide to hit the Ruth's
Bethesda venue, I have an entirely different impression.
This is testosterone territory to be sure — burly chairs
and acres of wood, but there are lots of couples and
entire tables of women. I don't feel uncomfortable dining
here alone. The wooden and brass appointments and potted
palms give it a feel of the Gilded Age, (I expect to
turn a corner and see Sanford White and his corpulent
chaps wreathed in laurel) but it's just a great post-feminist
place for hearty eaters.
Rather than sit alone at a table — a little too
"Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone" for me —
I decide to sit at the bar. There's an Astros-Giants
game on the tube, a cute bartender named Dave and a
book I brought: a biography of Martha Gellhorn, fearless
woman war correspondent, femme du monde, Hemingway
ex-wife. I'm in perfect company and happy as a clam.
The martini is perfect — crisp, cold and loaded
with olives.The manager has heard I'm here — I'm
getting so popular! — and comes to chat. Although
Ruth's eponymous restaurants live on, she , alas, is
gone. She passed away in 2002. But how can she be forgotten?
That crazy illogical restaurant name at age 33, New
Orleans housewife Ruth Fertel got a divorce from her
husband, mortgaged her house for $22,000 and bought
Chris Steak House in order to earn enough money to be
able to send her two sons to college. And that voice
— like gravel in an ashtray, beckoning all to come
and partake of the great American overindulgence: red
meat and too much of it.
The rib eye I order is perfection, the broiled tomatoes
are sweet, the baby spinach is emerald, just slightly
steamed. Undaunted, I ask for — and finish —
banana cream pie. I have just consumed a grotesque amount
of food, the calorie equivalent of two whole days in
one sitting. But I am not ashamed of myself, even for
my excess. In fact, I haven't been this happy in months. Back to restaurant list
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