LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

By Marcy Nathan, Creative Director

Shortly out of graduate school, I was hired as creative director for the advertising agency that handled the Ruth’s Chris Steak House account at that time. When I was growing up, my family were Sunday regulars at the restaurant on Broad and Orleans. Ruth Fertel, the owner, who lived next door, often worked the dining room alongside the female servers, who called themselves the Broads of Broad Street. (Fertel’s servers were primarily single, hardworking mothers like herself.) Our server, Lois, knew my parent’s drink order, which sisters wanted the house dressing on their wedge salad, and which wanted the blue cheese before we even sat down. It was the Galatoire’s of steak houses.

One of my responsibilities as creative director was writing and producing the radio commercials for 70-plus Ruth’s Chris Steak Houses; today there are more than double that number. Ruth was the face — and the voice — of the brand. As a single mother, she’d mortgaged her home in 1965 to buy a restaurant, Chris Steak House, that she saw for sale in a classified ad. No one could tell that story, or how she gave away all of her steaks during Hurricane Betsy, as well as Ruth could. And her smoky voice just sounded like a steak house.

Our creative team always went out to lunch with Ruth after those recording sessions for the radio ads, usually to Christian’s (a restaurant in Mid City owned by the grandson of Jean Galatoire, founder of Galatoire’s), sometimes to Mona’s on Banks — Ruth loved hummus, and even she could only eat so much steak.

The meals were always memorable, but none more so than my first, when the account executive with us announced to the table that she was a vegetarian. To which Ruth replied, “Never trust a vegetarian.” I’d been thinking about having the Shrimp Madeleine a la Christian’s all morning, but just in case she also didn’t trust pescatarians, I decided to order the veal.

My friend Aaron Burgau, the local chef and restaurant owner, is one of the new owners of the venerable Charlie’s Steak House on Dryades Street Uptown. Charlie’s is the oldest steak house in New Orleans and one of the oldest restaurants in the city. Its oversized, butter-sizzled steaks are served on metal plates, as they have been since 1932. Crescent City Steaks on North Broad has been serving sizzling steaks since 1934. It is Louisiana’s oldest family-owned steakhouse. Like Charlie’s, Crescent City Steaks lays claim to cooking the first steaks sizzled in butter. But it was Ruth Fertel who introduced this New Orleans style of cooking to the rest of the country, long before Paul Prudhomme blackened his first redfish.