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house” feeling that the original Ruth’s Chris had in spades, the individual locations had to play to what made them each uniquely special—not try to duplicate what made the New Orleans outpost magical. This approach—combined, of course, with the restaurant’s luxurious, top-tier menu— caused restaurants to multiply hand-over- fist. Today, there are over 150 Ruth’s Chris outposts across the globe from Puerto Rico to Toronto and everywhere in-between, as a leap-of-faith life choice of a scrappy single mother from rural Louisiana has flourished into a publicly traded hospitality empire. (RUTH is the ticker symbol, naturally.) “When I started franchising, that really got the name out,” Ruth explained of the busi- ness model, “and the more the name became known, the busier we became in all our res- taurants. Our name recognition spread. In fact, all our franchisees were people who had eaten at one time or another in one of our restaurants. We never looked for franchi- sees. They came to us.” Fertel died of lung cancer in 2002, leav- ing behind a legacy that helped completely change the role of women in restaurant culture. Thanks in no small part to Ruth’s trail- blazing, there have been major cultural shifts in recent years surrounding how steakhouses talk about their restaurants, advertise them and even build their spaces, with chefs and owners now creating dining environments that are less focused on gender exclusivity and more on what matters: great food in in- clusive, welcoming places that aren’t served up with a side of sexism. Sarah Baird is the author of multiple books including New Orleans Cocktails and Flask , which was released in summer 2019. A 2019 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, her work has been featured in The New York Times , Washington Post , Saveur , Eater , Food &Wine and The Guardian , among others. Previously, she served as restaurant critic for the New Orleans alt-weekly, Gambit Weekly , where she won Critic of the Year in 2015 for her dining reviews.

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24 ROUSES SUMMER 2021