Ruby's South Coast Plaza - Costa Mesa

Last week, we had a goal, and it’s a rather silly one: we were going to attempt to not spend any money on anything. Dinner would have to be cobbled together from stuff we had in our pantry, freezer or fridge. Lunch was going to be leftovers from dinner, or it would have to be paid for by gift cards that were either generously given to us as presents or that we won during company Christmas party raffles. But alas, our experiment did not last long.

Two weeks before Christmas is apparently the wrong time to start tightening one’s purse strings.

There were gifts to buy, errands to run, sales too good not to take advantage of—basically all the usual trappings of living in a first world country.

But here’s where things went (overdramatic alert!) downhill. We realized the $25 gift card we had to Ruby’s barely covered lunch…and to think, we shared one burger!

Granted, I probably shouldn’t have ordered the soda; but what’s a burger and fries without a icy tall glass of Coca Cola to wash it down, especially here, at Ruby’s, where denying yourself a Coke in one of those curvy glasses is almost un-American.

Still, we were trying to be good. The double burger we ordered was one of the cheapest, with two thin patties instead of the big, thick ones that retailed for a buck or two more. When we split the sandwich between the two of us, it went down without incident—decent, hot, sloppy—the kind of burger that didn’t stay in my memory because I’ve had way better and way worse.

But the shoestring fries were “bottomless” and fryer-hot and crisp, so I asked for and ate the second basket even though I didn’t really need to.

And oh yeah, we ordered a basket of fried zucchini whose breading slipped off the coins the minute I bit. We did it, because, well, we didn’t want to look cheap ordering just one burger to share between two people. This is why the experiment ultimately failed. If you want to be cheap, you have to be prepared to look cheap.

Ruby's
3333 Bear Street #120
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
(714) 662-7829

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