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https://www.nola.com/news/coronavirus/article_03002d74-8aee-11ea-a571-5b9ad098afb4.html 's grandson scolds Ruth's Chris steakhouse on Twitter over coronavirus response

BY DOUG MACCASH | STAFF WRITER APR 30, 2020 - 10:30 AM

Ruth Fertel, a single mother with two teenage sons, mortgaged her Gentilly home to raise the $18,000 for the 60-seat restaurant on the corner of North Broad Street and Ursulines Avenue. Fertel, who graduated from LSU at age 19 with a double major in chemistry and physics, took on every task at the steak house, from keeping the book to butchering beef. Her rst night, she sold 35 steaks at $5 each. In 1976, the steak house burned down. Luckily, Fertel had bought another building nearby on North Broad Street for special events. Her purchase contract, however, only let her use the Chris Steak House name at the original location. Thus was born the awkward but now world-famous name: Ruth’s Chris Steak House. TIMES-PICAYUNE ARCHIVE

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Rien Fertel is the grandson of the late, legendary restaurateur Ruth Fertel, who parlayed a single Broad Street steakhouse into a coast-to-coast empire. He’ll be the rst to tell you that he has no connection with the current corporate owners, Ruth’s Hospitality Group. But that didn’t stop him from recently giving them some coronavirus-era advice via Twitter.

The Ruth's Chris Steak House chain, which boasts 150 locations including franchisees scattered around the globe, received a $20 million loan through the federal government's Paycheck Protection Program, which was meant to support struggling businesses during the era of coronavirus social distancing. Most onlookers believed the loans were meant for smaller operations than Ruth’s Chris.

The COVID-19 contagion had certainly been unkind to the Ruth’s Hospitality Group, with restaurants shuttered and stock prices low. But after receiving a dose of shaming from the public and media, the corporation gave the money back on April 23.

Fertel thought they should do more. Unprecedented events. Local news you can trust | Subscribe today for $2.32 a week.

Author Rien Fertel, grandson of restaurateur Ruth Fertel

PHOTO BY KATY SIMPSON SMITH

"Ruth’s grandson here," he tweeted on April 24. "I salute the decision you made yesterday to return the $20 million small business loan. But it’s not enough."

"I urge you to do more," Fertel continued in a second tweet, "To give back like she did. To do better than what she was nancially capable of back in 1965."

Fertel was referring to a long-ago act of civic consciousness that cemented Ruth Fertel’s place in the pantheon of Crescent City heroes.

Hurricane Betsy had battered the city and left swaths without power. As her grandson explained, instead of watching her prime steaks go to waste, Ruth Fertel cooked them up for rst responders and folks from the neighborhood around North Broad and Ursulines Avenue. The original Ruth’s Chris Steak House had been in grandma’s hands for roughly a year. But by the time the power came back on, its place in lore was already assured.

Rien Fertel called on the corporation that sprang from that fountainhead to do something similarly generous. "There're countless ways to give," Fertel wrote in a third tweet. "If Unprecedented events. Local news you can trust | Subscribe today for $2.32 a week. you would like suggestions, if you would like to be put in touch with people in her beloved hometown of New Orleans, where I live today, please reach out."

His challenge to the luxury restaurant chain struck a chord in the so-called Twitterverse. Together, the three short posts were retweeted more than 1,000 times, receiving 16,000 heart-shaped symbols of approval and scads of positive comments.

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Rien Fertel @rienfertel

Dear @RuthsChris, Ruth's grandson here. I salute the decision you made yesterday to return the $20 million small business loan. But it's not enough.

27.1K 5:10 PM - Apr 24, 2020

5,200 people are talking about this

Rien is a touch embarrassed by the popularity of his posts. He said he’s not a slave to social media and, on most days, he doesn’t really care very much about the restaurant chain forever associated with his name. He doesn’t even care about steaks, having recently sworn off red meat.

But something about the news that the multi-million-dollar corporation considered itself in need of a government- sponsored coronavirus relief loan set him off.

"I just said, ‘That’s a bad look,’" he recalls. Unprecedented events. Local news you can trust | Subscribe today for $2.32 a week.

A let is served during lunch hour at the original Ruth's Chris Steak House on N. Broad Street, in 2002.

(Jennifer Zdon, The Times-Picayune | Nola.com Archive)

Fertel composed the tweets in his head as he sat at a stoplight while daring to break quarantine long enough to breathe some fresh air and buy a snowball. He asked his girlfriend to proofread his posts as he issued them. It was cathartic.

Fertel, 39, is the son of Ruth’s son, Jerry, and Rosemary Parisi. He said that he grew up in the kitchen of the Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Lafayette, which his mom managed. He scrubbed and peeled potatoes, washed dishes and made salads long before he was old enough to work as an ofcial employee.

Trips to grandma’s place at the border of Treme and Mid-City in New Orleans were regular, Fertel said. And when he was a teen, he accompanied the restaurant’s founder to an ever-increasing number of opening celebrations for new locations near and far.

Eventually, Fertel left the restaurant life to pursue a career as a historian and author. He's written three books and has taught classes at Tulane University, Loyola University and recently at the Louisiana State Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel.

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In 1999, Ruth Fertel cashed out, selling the storied steak business to an investment rm. She passed away in 2002. In 2005, the restaurant chain’s agship location at Broad and Ursulines was swamped in the watery aftermath of .

The corporate owners never reopened, earning them the ire of recovery-era New Orleans. Worse yet, they moved the company headquarters from the restaurant’s gritty urban birthplace to faraway Florida.

"We all can’t help feel a little Katrina ashbacky right now," Fertel said, offering a possible explanation for his uncharacteristic twitter takedown of his grandma’s company. Maybe there’s a touch of guilt at work. After all, Fertel said, he too left town after Katrina, to earn a master’s degree in New York City, while New Orleans struggled to come back.

Whatever the emotional backstory may be, Fertel said he hopes the executives at Ruth’s Chris Steak House will see clear to help- out their ancestral starting point.

"I know that compared to all the other things going on, this is really small," Fertel said. "But I hope and pray the corporation is listening. Maybe naively, I still think they will do something."

Ruth’s Hospitality Group did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

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EMAIL DOUG MACCASH AT [email protected]. FOLLOW HIM ON INSTAGRAM AT DOUGMACCASH, ON TWITTER AT DOUG MACCASH AND ON FACEBOOK AT DOUGLAS JAMES MACCASH.

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