{"id":8941,"date":"2014-08-03T22:39:25","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T02:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=8941"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:07","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:07","slug":"shakedown-at-the-steakhouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2014\/08\/shakedown-at-the-steakhouse\/","title":{"rendered":"Shakedown at the Steakhouse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Shakedown<\/a>Not too long ago, my wife’s dentist office mailed her a $77 gift card for Ruth’s Chris Steak House.\u00a0 We thought it was a strange kind of thank-you for the dental work my wife has had to undergo the last few years.\u00a0 Nonetheless, not ones to pass up a freebie, we decided to use the gift card last week.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, we would have been better off re-gifting the gift card to our local public radio station.\u00a0 Ruth’s Chris does not publish its prices online, for a reason.\u00a0 To start with, our martinis turned out to be $13.50 and $14.50 each.\u00a0 This is Asheville, North Carolina, not New York City.\u00a0 I don’t care how good the martinis are (and they were good), I object when a restaurant has a 6x or 7x markup<\/a> on its drinks.<\/p>\n

Our seating was nice but not the most romantic we ever had — we had a good view of the dining room, that’s all.\u00a0 Our service was good but not the best we ever had — our server was well-trained in the quiet, serious pretentiousness that one-percenters must expect.<\/p>\n

Our dinners were good but not the most memorable we ever had — my medium-rare steak was rather cool and rare, and the au poivre sauce on the side ($4 extra) had so much dill and\/or rosemary you would never know there were peppercorns somewhere in there.<\/p>\n

What was memorable was our tab — among the highest we ever had.\u00a0 I thought dinners in Paris were expensive but Ruth’s Chris brings that “we’ve been gouged” feeling back home.\u00a0 After your $14 martini, you can enjoy a steak without sides for $45, a dish of spinach for $9, and a few tablespoons of a mediocre sauce for $4 that any decent restaurant would include in the cost of your dinner.\u00a0 Sorry.<\/p>\n

Like most other upscale steakhouses — Mortons, Smith & Wollensky, Palm, Capital Grille, to name a few —\u00a0 Ruth’s Chris is just another shakedown.\u00a0 I don’t understand the concept, or who they intend to appeal to — business people on price-be-damned expense accounts, hoping to impress clients?<\/p>\n

Some people enjoy this restaurant — you can find them on TripAdvisor<\/a>.\u00a0 But I would have preferred dining at one of our favorite, more reasonably-priced, locally-owned restaurants, like Corner Kitchen<\/a> or Bouchon<\/a>, and will do so from now on — gift cards be damned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not too long ago, my wife’s dentist office mailed her a $77 gift card for Ruth’s Chris Steak House.\u00a0 We thought it was a strange kind of thank-you for the dental work my wife has had to undergo the last … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8941"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8971,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8941\/revisions\/8971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}