Hold the Meat – How Ruby Tuesday broke my heart

While restaurants have gotten a lot better about having vegetarian options on the menu, very few offer anything beyond the standard portobello sandwich or meatless pasta dish. The closest they’ll get to catering to vegetarians is offering a veggie burger. Unfortunately, the veggie burger is invariably the food service version of a Gardenburger or Boca burger. New York City diners are especially fond of the mushy, vegetable-laden Dr. Praeger’s variety. The problem with this is that you end up paying between $6 and $10 for something you can buy at the grocery store for a fraction of the price.

Yes, you can make the argument that anything you get at a restaurant can be made at home for a fraction of the price, but my belief is that I’m paying the extra money at least in part to have somebody more talented than I make my dinner. However, when it comes to a frozen grocery store veggie burger, there’s not really anything anyone can do with it that I can’t do myself, leading to the whole affair just feeling like a disappointing ripoff.

This is why, for years and years and years, I loved Ruby Tuesday. You guys, they had this veggie burger that, while I’m sure was frozen and shipped in from parts unknown, was amazing. It was thick and meaty, and flat-out the greatest veggie burger I had ever had during my nearly thirty years on this planet. Even my friends who would never eat a regular grocery store veggie burger would talk about how amazing this thing was. It never failed to make me happy, and when I moved to New York and no longer had access to it, I would often lie in bed in my non-air-conditioned, shoebox apartment and dream about the delightful patty.

After not having one for a few years, I had pretty much learned to live without it — then I got pregnant. I got pregnant and my baby spoke to me often. Usually he said, “hey, why don’t you leave the office and go down and get a burrito bowl from Chipotle? Yes, I know that it’s Thursday and you’ve had one for lunch every day this week and the people behind the counter know your name and it’s getting a little awkward because you’re crazy fast food burrito lady, but I NEED GUACAMOLE NOW, WOMAN.”

Sometimes, however, he would whisper to me at night. He would whisper about Ruby Tuesday, and the most amazing veggie burger in the world. So one night, when he wouldn’t stop talking to me, I busted out the laptop and did a little search. By this time we were living in Jersey City, so as it turned out, the Ruby Tuesday was coming from inside the house.

Okay, not really. But there was totally one about 11 miles away in Elizabeth. Even better, it was right across the street from the Ikea. Swedish housewares and the best veggie burger in the world? We could make a day of it!

And make a day of it we did. Several times. I would just think up reasons why we needed to go to Ikea. “Hey, Luke. Don’t you think we need new, uh, salt and pepper shakers? How about some frames? Are we good on lamps? What about bookcases? Do we perhaps need more? No? What if I buy more books? Then will we need to go to Ikea and buy more bookcases and perhaps work up an appetite that we would need to sate in a conveniently located mid-price chain restaurant? Hmmmmmm?” Eventually he would take pity on my crazy, pregnant ass and we’d make the trip and my baby would be happy once again.

Eventually, the kid was born, and instead of “crazy pregnant lady,” I was “super-hormonal new mom who had no idea what she was doing and was on the verge of a nervous breakdown every second of every day.” To combat this, I would still try to get out of the house with the baby as much as possible. This is how I ended up back at that same Ruby Tuesday with a month-old infant and an appetite for the best veggie burger in the world.

When we sat down and the waiter gave us our menu, I knew something was different. The menu had gotten larger and boasted fresh ingredients. Generally fresh ingredients is a good thing, so I didn’t pay much attention to the new development. I made sure my beloved veggie burger was still on the menu and ordered. Then everything went horribly wrong.

The waiter brought me a sandwich — in that a sandwich can be defined as two slices of some sort of bread with a food-type filling in the middle. The thing between the two halves of the bun though, could never, ever, by anyone’s definition be called a burger. Now I understand that some people like Jeff would scoff at me even calling a veggie burger a burger, but OH MY GOD, this was something else entirely.

I still don’t really know how to accurately describe it, except it seemed to involve rice and … beans? Molded into some sort of vaguely circular patty-type object. If you knew my family you would know exactly what it looked like, because my sister is a ridiculous individual, and whenever she goes to a Mexican restaurant, she gets a giant bean burrito that she then cuts and mashes up until it’s a warm, brown, soupy mix of vomity-looking goo. That’s what this “burger” reminded me of.

I tried, you guys. I waited tables for a long time, so I am loathe to complain about anything in a restaurant. I had one bite, though, and that nervous breakdown I had been staving off nearly occurred right then and there. I don’t exactly remember what happened next; I probably whimpered something sadly to Luke and then blacked out. The point is, at the end of it, I had a salad instead, and, as far as I know, the best veggie burger in the world no longer exists.

I’m all for eating well and eating fresh food; I know that America in general and I, specifically, rely too much on processed foods and that they’re terrible for you. Once in a while though? They’re the greatest things on earth. But Ruby Tuesday took that thing away from me, and that’s how a mid-priced chain broke my heart.

Clacked by Kona Gallagher
on Jul 07, 2009 @ 14:00 EST5EDT