I always wondered about that name
“Known as the First Lady of Steak, Ruth Fertel was something special. From a 60-seat steak house, she built a business that spans the globe, but never lost sight of her original recipe for success: perfect steak, warm hospitality and good times that never stop rolling.”
Ruth’s Chris Steak House — the story and the name
Fertel family story by Randy FertelQuotes from the wiki
Ruth Ann Udstad Fertel (1927—2002) was a Louisiana businesswoman
School
Ruth Fertel according to the wiki
School
She skipped several grades in elementary school, and graduated at age 15. The family used the money from her brother Sig’s World War Two G.I. Bill benefits to send her to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge at 15, from where she graduated at age 19 with honors in chemistry and physics.
Marriage
She married Rodney Fertel, who lived in Baton Rouge and shared her love of horses, and they had two sons, Jerry and Randy. In 1951, they opened a racing stable in Baton Rouge. Ruth earned a thoroughbred trainer’s license, making her the first female horse trainer in Louisiana. Ruth and Rodney divorced in 1958.
Divorce
Unable to support herself and her teenage sons on her alimony payments, she initially supplemented her income by making drapes out of her own home. In 1961, she took a job as a lab technician for physician-scientist George E. Burch at the Tulane University School of Medicine.
Business
In 1965 Fertel, realizing she needed to earn more money to send her sons to college, found a classified ad in the Times-Picayune offering a restaurant for sale, the original Chris Steak House, a 60-seat restaurant at 1100 North Broad St, New Orleans. When she realized that it had opened on February 5, 1927, the day she was born, she took this as an omen. Ignoring the advice of her banker, lawyer, and friends, she mortgaged her house to purchase the restaurant, even though the business had previously failed six times under the previous owner.
HouseOn her first day, May 24, 1965, she sold 35 steaks at $5 each. Within six months, she had made over double her annual salary from her previous job.
In early 1976, shortly after signing a new ten-year lease on the restaurant, a fire ruined the property. Fertel had recently acquired a second property nearby to rent out as party space. She relocated the restaurant to its new location a few blocks away at 711 Broad Street. Fertel bought two shotgun houses behind the restaurant, remodeled and connected them, and lived there for the rest of her life.
