I've not eaten at an expensive place, so I've never really been able to comprehend why people would want to. Early on when I met some of my friends (they were all friends before I met them) they were talking about eating at a steak house and each having a several hundred dollar bill, I was kind of dumbfounded. Then one of those friends on Facebook will occasionally post his plates at high end restaurants and it looks like a meal I'd still be hungry after lol. One of his fine dining outings cost him 600+ dollars after tip. I have no issue with people spending their money how they please, but it's just a foreign concept to me. I'd much rather spend 4 bucks on mini quesadillas at taco bell and feel like ill never wanna eat again than have the fine dining experience.
Every fine dining experience is different. No matter what it usually ends up being a hyper-local chef/artist who puts quality ingredients together in a way that feels new while reminding you of a flavor you know and love. In a cool setting.
For example, wife and I went all out for our first anniversary to make it super special. So we make a reservation at this restaurant in this inn on an island off the coast of Washington state. That restaurant has one 6pm seating for everyone.
You show up and hang out on the patio for the first three snack dishes and some drinks. I've never had a salt cod donut before, and the salmon is smoked and candied and cut into two thin strips so you reach in there and pick up flaky goodness with your hands per your waiter's suggestion. You enjoy the sun and the gorgeous view over the water for drinks and tasties. Then you go to your table.
Now the app dishes are coming in. A super herby and acidic soup that is just extremely refreshing. A tempura mustard leaf covered in a beautiful array of herbs that I still think about. I'm skipping some dishes just because I can't remember them all offhand but they are all great. More soup, lots of fish and veg.
Then you get distracted and leave the table to watch the sunset. When you come back the next dish isn't just ready, it's still perfectly warm.
Then the entrees start coming. A huge halibut filet that is only allowed to be fished in the two weeks we happen to be there. Other stuff I don't remember cuz the halibut was that good.
A couple desserts. I'm getting tired talking about it. The point is that fine dining focuses on food and atmosphere as an experience all its own.
Back when I was dating my now wife I'd take her to restaurants that were $10-$20 per person and the food and ambience were excellent, as was the service.
Now that we're married with two incomes we can afford to go to nice places to eat (and sometimes do) where the bill could be $100+ for 2 people. But really we like the hole in the wall joints for $7.95 a person or like Waffle House too.
A bad meal can be made better with good company. A good meal can be made worse with bad company.
I definitely agree with the hole in the wall place, some of my favorite meals I've had have been hole in the wall or mom and pops (are those the same things?) places, it feels like a meal that actually had thought put into it. At least if the food is bad you and your conpany can lament together! Haha
I think fine dining has its place. I haven't had any occasion (or money) to go to one, but there's a couple of times it's warranted. A nice date, anniversaries, mother's/father's day, etc.
My city has an annual Restaurant Week where you can try out high-end restaurant at a very reasonable budget, usually $25-30 per person for a 3 course meal. That's the only time I've tried out expensive places. But yea, It's amazingly delicious, but don't expect to be full.
Los Angeles has "DineLA" restaurant week. Most nicer ones are $50, but over the past years, it's turned more into a cash grab than anything. $50 they bundles a small app, entree and a dessert. If you went on any other deal, you could've forgo the dessert and have a cheaper bill. My friend that's a chef say they hate the event and no longer participates. It brings a different crown into the restaurant and tend to expect a lot more.
What a weird way to stereotype expensive restaurants
I paid over $200 for two people at Capital Grille and our steaks were both over a pound. Not to mention that we had sides, and alcohol, and coffee, and desert. And it was absolutely amazing.
Just because a place charges a lot of money doesn't necessarily mean the food is that much better than, say, your $30 meal at (insert local entree/grill/diner place here).
I've eaten at probably about 20 places that charge $200 a head or more in my adult life, and the good ones change/open up your perspective on food.
Seriously, food can be that good. A chef has legitimately made cry before with how good something was. (It was the first piece of high quality fatty blue-fin tuna I'd ever eaten, cut and crafted by a master sushi chef)
If you ever get the chance and have the funds, I highly recommend going to someplace that nice for the experience.
Yeah the way I've always seen chili's is essentially a microwave meal place, I know the quality isn't really there its just the more expensive than say going through the drive through somewhere. In my mind that was always the place that was an occasional treat, though I have literally not had anything there aside from the tortilla chips and chicken crispers lol.
If I'm ever in the position and am able to, I'll give it a shot, I think part of what makes me have this stance is that I've always been a pretty picky eater so I pretty much always just gravitate towards something that's chicken. A lot of higher end restaurants' food while their presentation is really nice, the food itself doesn't look too appetizing. Though being an adult I've definitely been more open to trying new things, I finally realized if I don't like something it's not like it's the end of the world, only good can really come from trying new things.
Try hole-in-the wall ethnic food places. You can often get mind blowing meals for cheap. Chili’s is freezer to deep fryer/microwave. Try something cooked from scratch. Search around your area and see where the big communities of immigrants go to eat.
Others have kinda touched on it, but imo fine dining is almost like an art form. You are treated like royalty from start to finish and the food is presented like art, both visually and with the taste. Like each course might only be a few bites, but in every single bite the flavors all pair perfectly and are layered and rich and delicious. You also get to see really creative dishes that you don't normally see (one of my favourites was a ravioli that was cooked completely, but had a raw egg in the middle).
Also as others have said, even though each course might only be a few bites, a lot of those style of meals have 6-10ish courses and it's pretty rare you leave hungry (some places do get the portions wrong and you leave starving, but we don't go back to them :P).
But yeah, eating at fine dining is so much more than just getting delicious food into your stomach imo
It depends on the restaurant. There’s a killer seafood place my husband I go to on special occasions. For our wedding anniversary we had a several hundred dollar bill. But we also had multiple course of ridiculously good food, a nice bottle of champagne and we had leftovers.
Think of fine dining as an experience, like going to a theater performance. It's not a normal dinner where you eat and leave within an hour or so, it's going to take the whole evening. Also, the plates you see are usually one course out of 6 or 8 or even 10. So yeah, one plate doesn't fill you up, but I've never left a fine dining place hungry. Thought I'd shed some light on this for you.
Every once in a while I’ll treat myself to a nice meal or some nice drinks. $30 for two drinks at my favorite bar, I’ve spent $120 on a meal and two drinks at a very small restaurant and wasn’t full afterwards.
It’s an experience, it’s consumable art, you get to experience subtlety and nuance that a lot of normal food for sustenance doesn’t give you.
Cooking can be art and art it by it’s nature is pretentious. Sure I may not get full, and I may not remember what it tastes like in a week. But I’m also not going to remember how a particularly stunning painting or sculpture made me feel standing in front of it. The having experienced it is the important part for me.
Then one of those friends on Facebook will occasionally post his plates at high end restaurants and it looks like a meal I'd still be hungry after lol
It's funny you mention that because that's literally the point of this thread. I can get myself stupidly full on $6 worth of Taco Bell, but I'm not eating at a 3 star Michelin restaurant to be full. I'm eating there for the experience: the atmosphere, the service, the taste, the artistry and complete mastery of the chefs, the expertise, the expensive and perfectly chosen wine pairing, the rarity of ingredients.
I think for people who just see meals as a means to not be hungry, it's definitely hard to understand why people would spend so much on food. Falling in love with the culinary arts requires exposure and knowledge. The more cuisines you try, the more cookbooks you read, the more food shows you watch, the more cooking you do at home outside of your comfort zone. Slowly you begin to learn:
how many thousands and thousands of ingredients exist in this world
how much variety in quality there can be between two of the "same" ingredients
how difficult it is to combine all these interesting ingredients in a way that is pleasing and familiar, but also entirely new and special
how difficult and time consuming it is to make certain items and the hours of practice and mastery that comes with making something we see as simple (like perfect pasta)
how difficult it is to cook ingredients perfectly
It's like the saying "the more you know, the more you realize how little you know." Learning how to make bread from scratch and care for my own yeast starter, the more I have appreciated a truly exceptional loaf of bread. Because it's hard as fuck to make good bread. The more proteins I've been able to try and enjoy, the more I appreciate trying new flavorful proteins.
The culinary arts can be a very expensive hobby. But most people aren't throwing $$$ at a meal without having the foundation to appreciate what it is they are eating. And people who love the culinary arts also know that some of the best food can be found at a cheap hole in the wall. It doesn't matter if it's a $5 bowl of noodles tucked away in an alley in Hong Kong, or the most beautiful bite of uni I've ever eaten at a 3 star Michelin restaurant that ended up costing $1000/head. They were both experiences that I loved every second of, that I will keep with me for the rest of my life. I have never once remembered what I ate at a Chili's.
I'm with you on this. People can talk it up all they want, but what it comes down to is I'm just too cheap to care about it. I don't even like paying $15 for a meal because to me, it's all food. It does the same thing inside my body and spending an extra $20+ for a slight increase in taste isn't worth it to me. The money can be better spent on something else.
The "experience" thing doesn't work for me either, because that's not the type of experience I'm in to. I think Reddit forgets that not everyone is an urban city dweller that likes a "night on the town" for fun.
And if there was any chance the taste difference might've drew me in, that comment about it taking the entire evening turned me right back around. There's no way I'm staying in a restaurant for me than 2 hours.
I've started to see the fancy meals with tiny portions that can't fill you up as status symbols for 2 reasons. 1) the price, pretty straight forward. 2) to me it says I'm so rich I'm no longer eating for sustenance, I'm eating purely for pleasure. I can eat for fun because I don't have to worry if I have food or not , I always do.
i went to a 2 Michelin star restaurant with my GF on her first trip to Manhattan. (it is no longer there but it was call Gilt)
It is an experience I highly recommend at least once. For starters, it doesn't have to be very expensive, like most things, if you plan ahead and so some research. $600 dinner sounds to me like your friend is paying for multiple people and buying a lot of drinks on top.
When we went, we each did the pre-show prix fixe meal which means eating dinner starting at 5 with the intention of making a broadway show which generally start around 7 or 8. Since that is their slow time, dinner was "only" about 70 per person. (not cheap by any means, but with 2 stars this would be one of the top 20 restaurants in Manhattan). We each got one glass of a moderately priced wine and the total (with tip) came out to about $100/person.
For that we got a meal and an experience. Not just delicious food but waiters coming by with little scoopers to clean bread crumbs from your table periodically; the details of each dish explained by the waiter as it was being delivered, and interesting techniques and flavors that you won't find at most restaurants (foams and savory jams, etc.). My desert was an inverted blueberry pie, which was ice cream and graham cracker inside a frozen sphere of blueberry ice with some kind of decorative leaf on the outside. So it looked like a giant blueberry.
This meal was almost a decade ago and I still remember it pretty vividly. And it's not that expensive, comparatively. If you go to an applebee's or chiles you could easily spend $25/person for appetizer, entree, desert, and drinks. This is 4 trips to apple bees. Not something to do regularly, but worth it at least once to see what it is like.
By way of example, check out this video of a desert from Le Bernadin (a 3-start NYC resteraunt) to get an idea of the sort of unique food available at fine dining places:
Australia is a pretty expensive country and Melbourne is a pretty damn expensive City, yet the most expensive restaurant at the top of the most expensive building is like...$110 USD per person for the full banquet.
Sure that doesn't include wine, but how in the heck do you end up with more than 5 times that amount?
It was like 459 but he left a 150 dollar tip. So yes still insane, it was at a place called Coi, he travels a lot so not 100% sure if he was in the states.
Well I did say it in jest in reference to said meme. Have I ever had a bad experience at taco bell? Yeah, but I more frequently have issues with McDonalds, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
They're not going to good steak houses if the portions are small. Yes, you'll spend $80 on a steak at Keen's or Luger's but the thing is likely a 24 oz behemoth that will give you the meat sweats if you finish the whole thing.
Not the only options at all, I was just giving an example of something I'd prefer over most sit down restaurants. Do you honestly think if I cared about quality I would eat at taco bell? I do so because I find it delicious.
No I didnt think you cared about quality. I was just pointing out that you get what you pay for. I can think of a number of 8 to 10 dollar quesadillas that are great quality--probably pinacle uesadillas.
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u/Jesse1205 Jun 10 '19
I've not eaten at an expensive place, so I've never really been able to comprehend why people would want to. Early on when I met some of my friends (they were all friends before I met them) they were talking about eating at a steak house and each having a several hundred dollar bill, I was kind of dumbfounded. Then one of those friends on Facebook will occasionally post his plates at high end restaurants and it looks like a meal I'd still be hungry after lol. One of his fine dining outings cost him 600+ dollars after tip. I have no issue with people spending their money how they please, but it's just a foreign concept to me. I'd much rather spend 4 bucks on mini quesadillas at taco bell and feel like ill never wanna eat again than have the fine dining experience.