Last night, my wife and I went to a restaurant in Salt Lake City called Ruth's Chris Steak House. This is one of the fancier places to eat in Salt Lake that require you to get a reservation like a week or so in advance.
Our reservation was for 5:15 and we got there right around 5 and they seemed to have just opened. We were one of the first groups to show up for our dinner and it was pretty quiet in there. There were servers all over the place just standing along the walls. It was weird to see so many people working in a restaurant and just standing around, but after about an hour or so, the entire restaurant was full of people and all the workers were doing their specific tasks. It was like a well oiled machine. Much different than the normal restaurants that we normally go to. The cool part was our waiter just focused on taking care of making sure that our order was in and that we were comfortable. There were two servers that just focused on filling all the water at each table in the room we were in. Each course of our meal was brought out but different servers as well. It was cool to see so many people working together to make sure that people had a great experience there.
For my meal, I ordered a ribeye steak, Ceasar salad, and a side of au gratin potatoes. The salad was the best Ceasar salad I have ever had. I have never had a Ceasar salad with freshly made dressing and it is a game changer. I was not a fan of Ceasar salad before, but I wanted to try something new and figured that this would be better than the salads I have had before. Each piece of lettuce had the perfect amount of dressing on it and the croutons were freshly made and had the perfect soft crunch.
The steak.... The steak was perfection. They cook it in an 1800 degree broiler and season it with salt, parsley and butter. That is it. It was the most flavorful steak I have ever had in my life and the fat on the meat had the perfect crispness to it that melted like butter in your mouth.
The sides were also amazing. My wife got a sweet potato casserole that tasted more like a dessert than sweet potatoes. I do not like sweet potatoes at all but it was so good. The au gratin potatoes were really good. I really need to learn to make au gratin potatoes because they are some of my favorite was to eat potatoes, but I have only had the dehydrated kind in a box. Fresh au gratin potatoes are so much better.
For dessert, I got a creme brulee. It came with some fresh berries on it. It was one of the best creme brulees I have ever had. There was fresh vanilla bean sprinkled onto the bowl and I could taste it with each bite. My wife got a peanut butter cake that tasted like a cheesecake with a bit of peanut butter in it.
The entire meal was amazing and I could see why it cost so much more than eating at a normal restaurant. It is a place that I will probably only go to a couple times a year when we really want to treat ourselves. We were pretty conservative with what we ordered and it was just under $200 for the both of us. Even though it was a very expensive meal, it was well worth it for the experience. We have never been to a real fine dining establishment before and it was the perfect meal to celebrate my birthday and our new view on life. If you are in Salt Lake City, I highly recommend eating at Ruth's Chris Steak House.