There’s nothing about Ruby Tuesday you haven’t seen, or eaten something similar to, in any one of half a dozen restaurants in Bowling Green.

Casual dining has turned into a formula, and even though formulas work from town to town, a formula for a restaurant can get really boring.

Individually, Ruby Tuesday is attractive, clean and well maintained.

It’s too bad franchisers don’t realize that as more people visit casual dining restaurants, there needs to be a compelling reason to return on a regular basis. Ruby Tuesday doesn’t offer that compelling reason.

We visited Ruby Tuesday on a Friday night after a rain shower. We had a short wait, so we plopped ourselves down on the benches outside. After noticing they were wet, I went inside and told one of the staff and they promptly grabbed a handful of napkins and wiped off the benches so we could sit down. That was a nice touch of good customer service.

Once seated, we decided to order a Mega-rita, a 32 ounce margarita, on the rocks with salt. It took so long for the drink to arrive it was served with our food. An example of poor customer service from the bar.

For some reason, the rack of ribs caught my eye and once I saw that picture, I couldn’t see anything else. They call the ribs &#8220Hang off the Plate Ribs” and have even trademarked that name. That’s an example of exaggeration. It’s true, the ribs did hang off the plate – at one end. At the other end there was plenty of plate left for fries.

You can take any size portion of ribs and slide them to the end of the plate and advertise them as hanging off the end.

I chose the dry ribs – ribs rubbed with seasoning, and cooked for hours to develop an &#8220attitude,” as it says on the menu. The attitude I found was dull.

The ribs were tender, but aside from the seasoning on the outside, no flavor penetrated the meat. I don’t recommend them.

My dinner partner had Louisiana fried shrimp and loved them. They were large and fried golden brown. And there were lots of them. She had no problem substituting a baked potato for the fries. Both of our meals came with creamy cole slaw, which was acceptable.

Our experience at Ruby Tuesday wasn’t really bad or really good, and that makes it hard to judge.

As always, your experience at Ruby Tuesday may be different. I hope so.

I’d like to know about your experience at Ruby Tuesday.

Ruby Tuesday

2945 Scottsville Road

Hours: Monday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to midnight; Sunday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Price range for dinner: $6.49 to $21.99

Libation situation: full bar

Smoking: yes

– New restaurants are given an six-week grace period. Comments can be sent to Managing Editor Mike Alexieff by telephone at 783-3235 or by e-mail at malexieff@bgdailynews.com.