Would it surprise you to find out people don't like getting burned by scalding hot plates
or overpaying for their dinner?
If it would, stay tuned to find out what else Ruth's Chris doesn't want you to know.
In 2020, Ruth's Chris faced some serious backlash from the national public when it was revealed
that it had applied for and received $20 million in small business loans from the emergency
Payment Protection Program provided by the federal government.
It's not that the hospitality group did anything illegal - it's just that Americans didn't
appreciate the nation's largest chains gobbling up the protection originally intended for
actual small businesses.
After all, the available funds were limited and the program dried up almost immediately
after behemoths like Ruth's Chris took their massive bites.
In traditional American style, petitions were enthusiastically signed and the incredible
pressure felt by Ruth's Chris ultimately proved too great to shoulder.
In the end, the restaurant chain returned the money so it could be redistributed to
truly small businesses struggling to survive the most difficult economic burden in recent history.
Whether or not it was too little too late is another story.
Lawsuits can be among the most damaging events to a brand's reputation, and according to
Forbes, the Ruth's Chris sex discrimination suit was no exception.
The brand famously founded by female entrepreneur Ruth Fertel wasn't just faced with a single
accuser, but the group of women who stepped forward to object to the brand's alleged actions
were granted class-action status as they pursued damages against the national chain.
All of the claimants in the class-action suit were female former employees and they ranged
in rank from bartender all the way up to national sales manager.
The allegations were serious, including offenses from discrimination and unfair promotion and
firing practices to sexually inappropriate behavior from male coworkers, including supervisors.
One allegation involved a superior asking a prospective staff member to reach for something
on a high shelf.
"And the next day he said 'Oh yeah I told you to do that on purpose so I could point
out, you know, your, your ass to the rest of the kitchen staff.'"
As expected, Ruth's Chris denied all allegations of sex discrimination from the start, but
the reputational damage may already have been done in the court of public opinion.
Ruth's Chris may be an American favorite, but consistency with its menu offerings appears
not to be one of the brand's specialties.
While the company's enduring success implies a reasonably strong level of quality that
brings diners in year after year, plenty of reviews point to some serious mishaps in steak
preparation, and there's no greater steakhouse sin than, well, bad steak.
A reviewer on Trip Advisor complained that, even though she'd visited the Odenton, Maryland,
location several times before, a disappointing ribeye was bad enough that she wasn't sure
she'd ever return again.
Another fan of Ruth's Chris who claims to have dined at multiple locations in various
cities, appears to have had the misfortune of an all-around horrible meal that no one
in his family enjoyed when he visited the Roseville, California, location.
They may not be the star of a steakhouse menu, but side dishes are fairly important to most diners.
Sure, some carnivores may only settle into a table at Ruth's Chris for the meat and nothing
more, but the majority of guests want to complement their cuts with a veggie or two.
At Ruth's Chris, though, side dishes are a thorny subject for plenty of diners regularly
leaving irritated reviews online.
A common complaint across reviews is that Ruth's Chris serves all of its side dishes
family-style, which means you're getting a giant portion of any dish you order, even
if you're the only person at the table who wants it.
Aside from the increased cost that comes with oversize portions, some people simply don't
want that much of whatever they order.
Some side dishes, like the Brussels sprouts, garner gripes of being unseasoned.
Even a Ruth's Chris fan who loves their steaks and rates the restaurant 5 stars on Yelp still
admits that the side dishes may not be that great.
"Ruth's Chris Steak House" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
Through the years, the clunky combination of names has proved difficult to both remember
and pronounce correctly for plenty of diners, but they're not the only ones who have resented
the awkward name.
According to CNN Money, it turns out founder Ruth Fertel hated the name as much as anyone
else, and that was the case from the moment it was chosen.
In 1965, Ruth bought Chris Steak House from original owner Chris Matulich, and unlike
him or any other previous owners, she was able to make it financially successful.
When it came time to expand to a second location to support all of the business pouring in,
Chris objected to the repeated use of his name and, to resolve legal complications,
Ruth altered the official name by adding hers to the front.
"She moved the restaurant down the block in a week and she said 'I don't know just put
my name in front of it.'
And it became Ruth's Chris Steakhouse."
Had she known the business would eventually go national, she may have sought a more elegant
solution to the problem.
Few restaurants are eager to admit that their plates are overpriced, and many are unfairly
accused of this offense by disgruntled patrons who are merely angry for other reasons, but
this particular problem seems to run a little deeper at Ruth's Chris.
Guest complaints are one thing, but even the staff seems in on the secret that Ruth's Chris
dishes aren't worth the apparently inflated amounts the steakhouse is charging.
In an employer review, one former server partially attributes the negative work environment to
abuse from diners who already know the menu is overpriced and therefore think they're
being cheated.
The disgruntled staffer was hardly the only former server to admit the chain is overpriced.
Unhappy diners will make this complaint just about anywhere, but when the staff agree,
there may be more truth than rumor to the allegation, and it appears to occasionally
affect the entire experience at Ruth's Chris for both diners and employees.
There's a commonly held belief that fine dining steak houses come with a strict business casual
dress code, and that would certainly include a top name like Ruth's Chris.
While the restaurant would surely love to perpetuate the notion that diners should add
to the ambiance by dressing up the truth appears to remain elusive to many diners, who continue
fretting about outfit choices with questions like whether jeans are allowed at Ruth's Chris.
In this specific case, the truth to the secret isn't that difficult to uncover.
True, Ruth's Chris never specifically approves jeans in any published dress code; in fact,
they don't technically publish a dress code at all, but they do offer some insight into
their clothing preferences in the restaurant guidelines section of their official FAQs.
Here, you'll discover that jeans are never mentioned at all, so feel free to wear them
on your next visit.
It's fine.
You can even get away with wearing a hat if you pull up a seat at the bar - but not in
the dining room.
The specialty of any steakhouse should obviously be its steak menu, and that's surely the number
one reason hungry patrons pour into Ruth's Chris Steak House, but their delight with
the sizzling slabs of beef may not be entirely about the meat itself.
It may be surprising to steak hounds to learn that Ruth Fertel had a very simple trick up
her sleeve to delight almost any diner ordering one of her steaks.
According to the New York Times, it was the simple act of adding some butter to the top
of every steak just as it left the kitchen.
Butter on steak isn't a novel presentation and it's not hard to understand that the simple
ingredient instantly makes many mouths happy regardless of what's underneath it, but it's
the timing of Ruth's butter-bombing that made it so successful.
According to one former assistant manager on Quora, when the clarified butter drips
off the edge of the steak and hits the scorching hot plate, it produces an audible sizzle as
it reaches the table in front of hungry diners, priming consumers to appreciate the dish before
they even take a bite.
Ruth's Chris Steak House may have returned the $20 million that Americans felt they unfairly
drained from the federal Paycheck Protection Program at the onset of the pandemic, but
the national brand did pull off a subtler money grab that went largely unnoticed.
As reported by Nation's Restaurant News, Ruth's Chris raised menu prices in May 2021, while
the pandemic was far from a thing of the past, in order to relieve its own financial pressures
resulting from decreased capacity and increased supply costs.
How did the restaurant get away with further hiking its famously high prices at a time
when most diners were suffering?
According to the same report, it did what it always does.
Ruth's Chris only raised menu prices by 2.5%, hoping to go unnoticed with a strategy the
brand's own reps describe as routine for the brand.
Apparently, the steak house employs this technique regularly, especially when it notices competitors
raising prices during its quarterly analysis of menus.
Yes, that means that they troll the market every three months to see if it's safe to
raise prices again without drawing negative attention or, really, any attention at all.
Most are aware that Ruth's Chris Steak House, despite billing itself as fine dining, is
a chain restaurant.
Still, some customers may be under the misconception that there aren't that many of them, which
somehow gives the brand more of a boutique prestige.
This may have been true once, as any growing business starts with a single location and
ideally grows steadily, but today, according to Wilmington Biz, there are more Ruth's Chris
Steak Houses than any other fine-dining steak house in the country, and even the world.
On one hand, Ruth's Chris' ubiquity is a sign of great success, and that should certainly
impart some confidence in the brand.
On the other hand, having more locations than any other fine-dining steak house in the world
can also give potential patrons the sense that it's the Starbucks of steak — appreciated
by many, but maybe a little too corporate and definitely not a boutique experience.
It's hard to say whether the brand actively seeks to maintain this aura of exclusivity,
but you couldn't blame them for not actively dispelling it if that's the case.
Ruth's Chris is famous for its intensely hot plates, which are heated to a staggering 500
degrees before the presentation.
As you've already learned, that's great for causing the melting butter that tops each
steak to sizzle as it's served, but it appears that plenty of patrons are less than enthused
by the ancillary effects of the restaurant's favorite gimmick.
"A lot of restaurants will tell you 'Hey be careful, that's a hot plate' - they really
mean it here at Ruth's Chris.
It is a HOT plate."
Most reviewers acknowledge that wait staff offer plenty of warnings about the piping
hot plates, but some admit that it's difficult to remember not to do something as instinctive
as move the plate to a comfortable position after it's placed on the table.
There are also the understandable concerns of what would happen if a waiter accidentally
spilled a tray of these scalding plates on unsuspecting diners.
In the end, the thing your food is served on shouldn't be one of the deciding factors
in choosing where to eat.
Rules are rules, right?
Not necessarily.
While Ruth's Chris Steak House does publish some national guidelines for its guests, not
all locations enforce them equally, and it may be due to a case of too many cooks in
the kitchen, metaphorically.
Part of the brand's success in spreading across the country and around the world comes from
its franchise program, and that means that there are many different owners of Ruth's
Chris Steak Houses worldwide.
According to a Reddit rant from the executive chef at one Ruth's Chris location, policy
enforcement changed considerably when the location went from private ownership to corporate
control, and it only encourages bad behavior.
It appears the corporate arm of Ruth's Chris adopts the philosophy that the customer is
always right, so just about any persistent patron, whether justified or not, is likely
to come out on top of any disagreement.
It's a clear case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease at corporate locations, but please
don't use this secret knowledge for evil.
No one likes an entitled brat at dinner, or anywhere else.
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