Like the sign says, this is RUTH'S CHRIS STEAK HOUSE. It is located at 800 Green Valley Road in Greensboro. Turn right at the IHOP on Battleground. RUTH's CHRIS will be on your left a very short ways down Green Valley. Pay close attention. It's located in a large building and easy to miss.
I will warn you: IT IS EXPENSIVE, BUT EXTREMELY GOOD. You probably won't eat there every day. It's definitely a special occasion kind of place. I took Debbie there for her birthday.
This is some of the glitter that decorated the table where we were seated. These were tiny bits - fingertip size of confetti.
Birthday girl Debbie reads through the wine list. I also had a list. She chose the 50 Acres Cabernet. I had never heard of 50 Acres. If I had ordered a wine, which I didn't, I would have ordered the 50 Acres. Strange things like that happen frequently when you've been married as long as we have.
I should mention Debbie did not like the chairs at RUTH'S CHRIS. They reminded her of the chairs at Mayflower Seafood in Reidsville - the chairs are vertically too close to the bottom of the table. She couldn't cross her legs while dining. Very unfortunate circumstance.
I can't find Debbie's dish on the online menu. It's a beef filet topped with a sauce and crab meat. I'm guessing the filet was about 6 ounces. The crab was a generous portion. The beef was tender. I tasted both the beef and crab. Both were good, but paled compared to my steak.
Here is my dinner. This piece of meat must be the reason RUTH's CHRIS exists. It is a prime 24 ounce T-Bone. It was perfectly cooked (medium rare). There must have been salt added because the juice from the beef was very salty - just the way I like it.
According to our waiter, the beef was aged for 26 days and broiled in a dual (top and bottom) burner steak cooking thingie at 1800°. I can't remember whether the aging was dry or wet. The steak is served on a plate that has been heated to 500°. I can vouch for the 500° because I accidentally touched the plate. It was 492°. I guess it cooled down a bit before I touched it.
Debbie really liked my T-bone. She normally does not eat T-bone. If she had to do it over, she would order the T-bone.
There's a couple things going on in this photo. At the top of the photo, on the end of her fork, is grilled asparagus. That's a hollandaise sauce in the small bowl under her fork. I did not taste the asparagus. I hate asparagus. I found the hollandaise sauce to be unremarkable. I'm not sure what Debbie thought of the dish. I think she ate it all, it must have been pretty good.
I should mention the asparagus arrived at our table 5-10 minutes after the steaks were served. Not good.
Forget about the asparagus. Now look at the three sauces in the tray. These are intended for my T-bone. They are complements to my entree. They are a BLACK TRUFFLE BUTTER, SHIITAKE DEMI-GLACE, and a HONEY SOY GLAZE. I have no idea which sauce is which. All I know is they were all delicious, especially the one in the center. I especially liked how one is called a GLACE and another a GLAZE. These three complements cost $6.00. They were worth it. When no one was around and my steak was cleaned down to the bone, I tore off small pieces of bread and dipped them in the center sauce. Yummy for the tummy.
If you want a peaceful and quiet dinner, I recommend RUTH'S CHRIS on Sunday evening. From 6:30 PM until 8:30 PM, we had two adjoining dinning rooms to ourselves. We could see into a third dining room where some sort of wine tasting group of about 15 people were eating. A fourth dining room was completely empty. I can only assume we came on an unusual day and time. I think RUTH'S CHRIS has been open for quite a few years, so I doubt business is alway this bad. There were almost as many staff people working as there were customers.
Here's a shot of the bar. I think this was a waiter standing at the bar. There were no customers and no bartender. It looked like a helluva nice bar. It was well stocked, neat, clean and empty.
This is Shawn (or Shaun). I couldn't read his name tag in the semi-darkness. Shawn was our waiter. Shawn was friendly and helpful and talkative. Shawn was apparently bored. He had no customers. I can only hope on a busy night he would have been less chatty. I expect most people would like a talkative waiter. I am not one of those people, especially on my wife's birthday.
Did you know Shawn owns a Weber grill and an outdoor cooker which will hold seven turkeys. If you ever need a turkey(s) cooked and you've run out of cooker space, contact Shawn. He can help you.
Our waiter talked a lot. Frankly I got lost several times. He talked about grocery stores where you could find beef kinda like, but not exactly like, RUTH'S CHRIS. He talked about restaurants he has worked in or owned all over the country. Did you know there are more than 50,000 places to eat in New York City? Don't believe me? Go ask our RUTH'S CHRIS waiter. He worked and lived in NYC for many years.
Strangely, our waiter had never heard of SPARKS STEAKHOUSE. SPARKS is a famous New York City restaurant. SPARKS has been in operation since 1966. It's so well known the mafia executes people on the sidewalk in front of SPARKS. I know because I've eaten at SPARKS. Less than a month after I ate at SPARKS, the mafia blasted a couple of "bad guys" at the front door. SPARKS is so cool they change the tablecloth between courses. Our waiter, who has never heard of SPARKS, simply scraped our tablecloth before serving dessert.
I recommend you look at the SPARKS web site. It makes RUTH'S CHRIS look kinda humble, but SPARKS is located in NYC and RUTH'S CHRIS is in Greensboro.
I almost forgot. I asked our waiter about the odd name of the restaurant - RUTH'S CHRIS. According to Chatty Guy, a woman named Ruth Fertel bought the first restaurant from a guy named Chris. Chris' Steakhouse was located in New Orleans. Ruth was required to keep the name Chris. thus Chris' Steakhouse turned into RUTH'S CHRIS STEAKHOUSE.
Check out this dessert. It's White Chocolate Bread Pudding with a birthday candle. Thank goodness Shawn did not sing Happy Birthday to Debbie. The pastry chef wrote the greeting in chocolate sauce on the plate.
It was definitely bread pudding, but with a cake flavor. It was good, but different from any bread pudding I've ever had. Debbie said it was the white chocolate. I have to admit I've never had white chocolate bread pudding.
The sauces in the little silver cups are Tia Maria and Frangelico. The dessert was available with a choice of maybe five sauces. We choose two because we didn't know what Tia Maria was and wanted to try it. Tia Maria is a sauce made Jamaican Rum and Jamaican Coffee Beans. Frangelico is made from hazelnuts. Tia Maria was "bigly" delicious.
Note Debbie made this photo. The ethereal look is courtesy of the candlelight and her Samsung Galaxy S7 cell phone.
The two-person dinner tab was $196 with the tip, but there was a major problem with the bill.
The waiter failed to properly process my credit card. The credit card machine printed notices that the card was rejected. The waiter failed to notice the rejection and brought me pieces of paper that had no place to sign. I ignored it and signed a blank space on the bottom of the credit card notice. I believe that would have been the end of it and we would have walked out with a free meal in our bellies. However, Debbie told the waiter about the missing signature line. Oops! He realized he had messed up, took my credit card and ran it through his machine again. It worked on the second pass. Goodbye $196.
RUTH'S CHRIS is not cheap, but it's very good.
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