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“I was so naïve. I didn’t have any special in- terests besides hunting, fishing and reading, and it didn’t sound like I could make much money out of any of them. I saw lots of ads for service stations, but that wasn’t for me. Neither were the bars that were listed,” Ruth later recalled. But when she ran across the advertisement for Chris Steak House in 1965, a spark lit up inside of her. “I said to myself, ‘Simple menu. I know I can do that.’ I had eaten there. The food was really good, and it had a great reputation. So, I went to the res- taurant and met with the owner. I asked him, ‘How much do you want?’ He said $18,000, and I said I would buy it. I didn’t have any money, but I had my home.”

Armed with a convivial personality and dogged determination to succeed, Ruth cut steaks (first by hand, then with an electric bandsaw), oversaw front-of-house opera- tions for the 60-seat restaurant and kept a close watch on the books, proving herself to be a true one-woman-show in the early years. She also hired an almost-entirely fe- male waitstaff, including many single moms, a move that proved from the beginning Fertel wasn’t going to be doing things the same way as the “good old boys” club. “As business grew, Mom added more waitresses: Lou Dufrense (under five feet), Carol Held (Boston-Irish and called Yan-

kee), brassy Theresa Arena, tiny Lois Oxman, Shirley Barlett and Faye Pastrano...a feisty redhead who cruised the floor [and] had once been married to flashy light-heavy- weight champion Willie Pastrano who fought for the Mob,” Fertel writes of his mother’s core team of ladies. Ruth also knew how to turn setbacks into brand-defining moments. Nowhere is this more obvious than her—necessary, but inge- nious—rebranding of the business as Ruth’s Chris Steak House. “You've wolfed down the 16-ounce New York strip; you've consumed the one-pound baked potato; you've even managed the

22 ROUSES SUMMER 2021