I have been to several Ruths Chris throughout the US and decided to give the new location near Pearson Airport in Toronto a try. It started off very promising with a nice table for four in the corner near the fireplace and window. At 1:30 pm, the restaurant was practically empty, so I assume this is not a busy place for lunch.
So we were seated and feeling good. Our waitress came over about 5 minutes later and welcomed us. She asked if we wanted bottled or ice water and if we wanted any drinks. So far so good. But that's where things went down hill.
We had asked for some bread and the waitress said someone would bring it to us. We looked at the menu and decided on lunch. We waited close to 20 minutes before we flagged down the waitress saying we were ready. We had not gotten any bread by then. We placed our order and after another 20 minutes, the food came. My guests ordered the lunch specials with steak and I ordered the steak sandwich.
The steak sandwich was smothered with a bearnaise sauce (or something close). I took a bite and it was a bit cold, but tender. After brushing some of the sauce away, it was clear that the steak was prepared rare. I had asked for medium rare. When a runner came over to see what the problem was, I showed him the steak and he said "that's rare", what did you order.
In terms of staff, we weren't quite sure who was taking care of us (besides no one for the first 20 minutes). There was a waitress, a bread runner, a water runner and a second waiter. And then the manager came over asking if he could get us any more bread with an overzealous, "I'm going to make everything better" tone. We appreciated his effort but when he said "the whole team is here to help you", we had to laugh. The "team" as far as we were concerned were out of sight for quite a while.
Overall my recommendation to this location and every other place that doesn't get it, is get some bread on the guests table as soon as possible. Guests get to the restaurant hungry and when people are hungry, they get irritable.
The Manager was nice to address the situation on the final bill, however I would never have expected service to be an issue at an upscale steakhouse. Especially when they were not that busy. I guess it's back to The Keg across the street.