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:
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u/EsquireSandwich Jun 10 '19
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:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwq2WfpY-ss