Visited (28 Dec 2008) Ruth Chris in TST East after seeing all the positive comments in Open Rice.

I and my wife ordered and shared the followings:

Bread : This is pretty good, crusty outside with soft inside. The soft butter although light in taste went pretty well with the bread.

Crab Cake ($140) : The crab meat was finely threaded that you can hardly taste it. To make it worse, the crab meat was seasoned with strong garlic and cheese which makes it totally impossinle to be tasted as crab meat. You have to try the crab cake from Oyster & Wine Bar at Sheraton to really appreciate what a crab cake should be.

Stuffed Mushroom with Crab meat ($100) : again just like the crab cake, can only feel the taste of cheese and garlic.

French Onion Soup ($100) : This is acceptable but not exceptional. The piece of bread that was soaked in the soup takes up one third of the bowl.

New York Strip (16 oz) : Ordered Medium Rare and served medium rare. But there was not a single drop of meat juice as you cut through the meat. The inside of the meat was only just warm and without any meat juice, it tasted bland and tasteless. I am sure that the steak has been pre-prepared and re-heated prior to being served. I had a lot of experience with this bad practice by the chef. This is really bad and unacceptable. Only fast food chain do this.

Au Gratin Potato ($75) : Side dish to go with the New York Strip. This was again not freshly prepared. It has been pre-prepared and reheated. Bad.

Bread Pudding (Free in the house) : Only so so. The whole pudding was soft from the outside through to the inside. There was a lack of crust on the outside and the white custard like sauce was served cold rather that bubbling hot. Not my preference of an authentic bread pudding.

Bottle of Phoenix (Carb Sav) from Australia ($500) : This is not too bad considering its price. But the wine list was rather limited and hardly any other choice unless you are prepared to go over to the $1500 range.

Ennvironment and Service : Service is good but not attentive. You have to look for the waiter for everything rather than being served by them practively. We have to ask for a knife for our crab cake as we have used the one on the table for the butter and bread. Environment is only slightly better over Outback or Dan Ryan with a white table cloth.

Recommendatiion : There are a lot of other places better (in terms of food quality and environment) than Ruth Chris. I would not go again.