CAUSES — The Empress of Steak & her Loyal Subjects

Ruth Fertel: An appreciation of Ruth Fertel by her son Randy

One of the things that makes my mother so special is her very special presence. I mean not just how she holds herself but her presentness, how she is there, here, now, with you, not somewhere else, calculating where she wants to get, or what she wants from you, nor stuck in some past elsewhere working a grudge rather than experiencing the moment. She is present tense all the way. Here. Now.

This made her a great businesswoman and a great traveling companion, always there, riding the edge of the present moment, open to what comes. When she came back a couple years ago from a fancy cruise in the Mediterranean I asked her how the food was, expecting to hear raves. “Awful” she said but added: “one time we got off the boat somewhere in Greece and I had the best tomato salad of my life.” And there they were: the juicy tomatoes and the feta and olive oil and salt right there before you, and the light of the Greek islands flooding the moment.

That is the essence of my mother, the lady from Happy Jack, LA. A tomato salad eaten not in the first-class dining salon but in some marketplace in some nameless Greek town. In my family we argue about he proper way to cut a Creole tomato. Everything — here, now — mattered. God is in the details. All of them.

Another way she is present not absent is that, whoever you are, she makes no effort to stand above you. Be you grand or not so grand, she assumes you are on equal footing with her and she with you. She doesn’t pull rank. I can’t tell you how many times as I traveled from steak house to steak house around the country, how many servers and kitchen workers approached me and said, ‘You know, I have to tell you: the first time I saw your mother at this restaurant’s opening, she was peeling shrimp.’ They’d say: ‘There she was, the empress of steaks, and everyone is in the weeds and she saw the need to peel shrimp and she jumped right in.’ From that they knew they were in the right place. You could tell.

Somehow Mom transferred her gift of presence to the people who worked for her and the dishes she served and the tables she set and the restaurants she created around the country. This is part of the magic of Ruth’s Chris. Maybe it’s the sizzle that does it, but anyway in another sense this presence, this presentness, is the sizzle, the essence of the sizzle, the presence that sizzle helps create. In this world of cookie-cutter dining and Airline Highways everywhere, with Ruth’s Chris you are somewhere when you get there. Even on North Broad St. at the very center of New Orleans’ oh-so-elegant Mid-City. You don’t need to be somewhere else. This is the place, this is where the magic is. Don’t look over your shoulder because it’s happening right here. Right now. Can you hear it, can you see it, can you smell it, can you taste it? Sizzle. Sizzzle. Sizzzzzle.

We celebrate a courageous woman and her legendary career. Thanks Mom. You’re the greatest.

Randy Fertel