By Stacey L. Robinson
Ville Voice Eats Correspondent

On the Wednesday after the Great Steamboat Race and as is customary, I take one of my celebrity friends out to dinner.  For the past couple of years, we’ve gone to Jeff Ruby’s.  I love the atmosphere and the crowd isn’t at all pretentious as I thought it might be when the restaurant first opened.  Music is always great, drinks are good and the food is always fantastic!

So…why the flaw?  Well, the service was definitely off that night.  I wish I could point to all of the Derby week guests but in actuality, the bar area wasn’t overly crowded.  We sat at one of the bar booths toward the front of the room.  What a slow start….I mean, very slow…  I bet we went totally unnoticed for a good 10-15 minutes.  All the while I was thinking to myself (and I’m sure I said it out loud too), “It’s a good thing I’m local and not from out of town. Otherwise, I might not be at all impressed.” No hello, no welcome, no nothing.

Finally, when we did get the attention of the server, she didn’t seem real excited to be there.  At that point, we pretty much decided that it would not be an evening of good service.  We quickly diverted our attention to the menu.

Ordered the oysters which were plentiful and VERY good… fortunately, we didn’t use too much horseradish because the water glasses weren’t exactly overflowing.  We also got crab legs and though we had asked for two, the one we ended up sharing was absolutely scrumptious!

Okay, so the service was still way off…… Meanwhile I give kudos to the server’s assistant who did a much better job of servicing our table.  He actually got it!

Since the oysters and crab were so filling, we decided to split a filet.  It was cooked perfectly (medium rare) and was mouth-watering good.  We also ordered the creamed spinach which continues to be out of this world.

Had some decaf with a little Grand Marnier….by that time, we were stuffed though still a bit perplexed about the lack of service.  Over 2 ½ hours had passed and I just wanted to get the heck out of Dodge.  In the end, service was not good – server’s assistant got a cash tip – food was still the perfect gem.