Are expensive restaurants really much better than cheaper ones

Cafe Society
1

I have never eaten in an expensive restaurant. I think the most expensive ones I have been to top out at $50 an entree (meaning even if you get the most expensive thing on the menu, you are spending $50 max). And that is expensive by the standards of the circles I run in, at most of the sit down restaurants I go to the highest end entrees max out at $25-30 with the majority being $10-20.

To people who have been to higher end restaurants (Ruths chris, Mortons, etc) where entrees are $50-150 or so per person, is the food much better in quality? I have no reference point so I don’t know.

Are there places where the entrees are significantly more than $100 a person? I assume there are weird, esoteric places like that (where everything is flown in fresh from other countries, where famous people go to eat, etc), but are there any mainstream or chain restaurants where prices easily reach $300+ per entree?

2

Geez. After reading the title and first couple of sentences (and having a little experience with your average SDMB bear), I thought you would say you’ve never spent more than $15 an entree or something. I think I’ve only spent more than $50 per entree a handful of times ($50 per person a whole lot more times though), so I’m curious to read the responses as well.

3

And Atlas Belched.

4

It’s very rare for me to spend that much on dinner out but we had one awesome dinner out on our recent vacation and it was such a great experience that we resolved to spend more on dinner occasionally.

I’m not even sure it makes your cutoff though, our tab was just over $200 for appetizers, entrees, dessert and drinks including an after dinner scotch for my husband.

Not only was the food wonderful with interesting taste combinations and beautifully prepared the service was great and the location could not be beat.

5

[tough guy]My tab’s been that much a few times just for the scotch.[/tough guy]

6

We recently celebrated a work-related accomplishment by going to a schmancy place in town that specializes in meat. Even then, the whole check was about $100. I don’t know that I’ll ever make it to a place that’s significantly more than that. It was fantastic.

7

Fogo de Chao. BAM!

8

Every time I’ve spent ~$100 on a meal I’ve had a fantastic meal and did not regret spending that money. A friend of mine flew from San Francisco to Chicago to go to Alinea and spent either $500 or $700 a person. I can’t imagine doing that and not regretting it.

9

I once had someone ask me if I wanted to go to dinner where the entrees ran about $80 a person. Instead I sat in the car in the parking lot with 80 mcDoubles laughing hysterically at all those suckers who were going to be hungry again in 12 hours. Best decision I ever made.

10

Oh, and I think the steaks at Morton’s would run about $50. I doubt they have any food on their menu for $150.

11

Heh. Honestly, that place sounds like it shares something in common with the place I went: trying too hard on the atmosphere front. I was looking for amazing food, not a food theme park, and the one criticism I have of the place I went was that everything was (deliberately?) a little bit too big: the chairs, the tables, the doors, even the weird giant lighting-up menus, so that I felt like a hobbit eating there, or else I was eating at a troll’s hunting lodge.

The food was very, very good, but I wish they’d been satisfied with normal-sized furniture.

(Don’t get me wrong, I’d totally eat a Brazilian Meatstravanganza.)

12

I’ve been to a genuine 4-star restaurant once and a couple of 3-stars.

As excellent as the food was (not just the flavor, but little details, like rice never being over or undercooked) an even bigger difference was the service.

It’s really hard to describe. Imagine your water glass always being filled. You never actually see anyone filling it, but as soon as you take a sip, it’s magically full again. I was at the 4-star restaurant back when smoking was still accepted. I could take out a cigarette and suddenly a lighter appeared. When I finished my smoke, my ashtray was instantly replaced with a clean one.

There’s an overall level of excellence you don’t get at restaurants that are just a notch below.

13

A high-end sushi place will set you back $70-100 a person easy if you go hungry or are feeling experimental, and that’s not counting the drinks. I can also see expensive tapas bars ending up roughly the same way.

I have never been to a traditional western restaurant where the main course was more than $50, but I have been to a fixed-price local place where you paid $75 at the door and then they served an entire course and drinks where you didn’t have any choices about what you got. It was fun, but not something I would want to do regularly.

14

Hmmm, the most I have spent on a meal was around 400/person and I regretted it. The most I have had spent on me was about double that and I really enjoyed it though I thought it was stupid. I have many times had meals at 100-200/person and thought it was worth every penny. For meals in the range of 50-100, I find I can usually do better at home. Both my wife and I are foodies and wine snobs and love to cook.

15

I think 100/person at a high end sushi place is getting off easy.

Ah, not counting drinks. Yes I agree.

16

I’ve had the pleasure of eating at Uber expensive resturants a half-dozen or so times in my life, with the max costing about $350 for two people (Paris in Las Vegas).

I’ve never regretted them. To this day, I can still remember the Scallop that was entirely different from any I’d ever had before. It was this way because about 8 hours previous, it was still in the Atlantic Ocean. The texture was fantastic.

Another restaurant had a ‘amuseé’ to cleans the palate between courses. One was a thimbleful of cold split-pea soup. It was half a tongueful…a tablespoon at most. And it was the most intense embodiment of split-pea soup you could imagine.

Part of it is the pure variety of food you get in a sitting. Crab, steak, rare mushrooms, heavy cream, fantastic bleu cheese, risotto, a personal sized cake with molten chocolate on the inside and a perfect crisp texture on top.

I might be able to approach any one of the items, but I couldn’t do ALL of them, in ONE meal.

17

Sure, I’ve been to plenty of them, including a few considered to be on the short list of best restaurants in the world (Alinea, L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon, etc)

Are all expensive restaurants better than cheap ones? Hell, no. I’ve had far too many expensive meals that I thought were simply OK. There’s definitely a category of restaurants that are expensive because they’re in the right location, or have the right decor, or whatever. Sure, you can get a fancy entree there, but is it really great? Too often, it’s not, and I end up wishing I’d gone to that funky-looking BBQ place we passed on the way to the fancy place.

Are some worth the money? Hell yes! Alinea was incredible - the food and atmosphere were beyond anything you could think up. I really can’t even describe it, other to say that it was worth every penny I spent on it (and I spent plenty.)

The restaurants the OP lists - Ruth’s Chris, Mortons - those really aren’t even high-end restaurants. I’d consider them mid-level, and IMO aren’t really worth the money. Steaks are easy to cook; if I want to drop $300 on a couple steaks, I’ll fly some in from Lobel’s, cook them myself, and spend the remaining $200 on a really nice bottle of wine (or 10 really nice bottles of wine…) But that’s not to say that Ruth’s Kris and Morton’s aren’t good - they are, you’ll get a great steak there and probably pretty good service. But for my money, I want something I can’t cook at home.

Entrees? Not really. But prix-fixe menus that include several courses can easily be $300 or more. The most I’ve spent on dinner for 2, including many courses and drinks, was around $1K. And that was for a very special, once-in-a-lifetime thing; I don’t know if I’ll ever do it again.

18

First, Ruth’s Chris and Morton’s are not a high-end restaurants. They are nice, but they are not what most people consider fine dining. Especially in a large metro area.

Second, there are very few restaurants where a la carte entrees cost more than maybe $60 or $70. The super high-end places have pre-fixe (tasting) menus that consist of multiple courses, and sometimes, wine pairings. Even then, those pre-fixe menus usually top out at around $400-500. The vast majority are $100-300. That said, most of those types of places are probably not worth it for people who don’t love food, place a high value on a great atmosphere, and our super impressed by great service. For example, at a 3-star restaurant in Hong Kong I went to, early in the dinner, the waiter noticed I was left handed, and without prompting reversed all of my utensils. That sort of attention to detail is something that you can usually expect at a place like that.

That said, I have been to a few 3 Michellin star places, and a number of award winning places, and I can say the food does not scale linearly with the price. A $250 meal is not 5x as good as a $50 meal based purely on taste. But, it’s nice if you can afford it, or if you truly are a fan of cooking. For me, its more the latter. I am a fan of the process, so seeing someone combine ingredients and techniques in a unique way has a lot of value for me. I tend to buy fancy cooking products and like sous-vide machines and blendtec blenders. I like cooking and I am often awed by how well others can do it. It’s not that a meal at a fancy place will always be great, or will even taste much better. It’s that there is far more potential for both of those things. Largely, because you are paying for superior ingredients, and more of an really talented individual’s time and attention.

At the (really) high end, there aren’t many “chain” restaurants. There are places like Oceanaire or Morton’s, but again, they are not considered high-end places. Once you get in to meals being several hundred dollars, you are in rarefied air. Instead, popular chefs will open several restaurants under their brand (eg. Jose Andres, Emeril, Joel Robuchin). A chain would likely cheapen the process for many in a way the would alienate a lot of their customers.

As far as who goes to places like this, I would generally break them in to 5 categories:

  1. People on business. Since they don’t have to pay, and often are trying to impress someone, they go to the “best” places.

  2. People who are celebrating an event, and want something special.

  3. People who really like food, and the experience of dining at a great restaurant.

  4. The truly rich who just don’t want to be bothered by regular folk.

  5. People who want to check out the new hot chef’s restaurant, or want to be seen by important people.

I am more in the 2nd and 3rd groups. Most of the people who go are not super rich, but are comfortably in the top 5%, are white-collar professionals, 30+ years old, who view eating out as an entertainment expense. In the same way some folks go bowling, or drink out at the bar, go clubbing, or go to concerts, they will go to a nice restaurant instead. Considering many will go clubbing twice a week, and spend $200+, I would rather go to a fancy restaurant. Very few people go to the most expensive places like Daniel, The French Laundry, or Per Se on a regular basis.

19

An expensive restaurant isn’t necessarily better than a hole-in-the-wall, but there are things that you can get in an expensive restaurant that can’t be done on the cheap.

Quality ingredients matter. Good quality meat costs money. Even at the grocery store, if you want a really nice steak you are going to pay for it. But quality at a good restaurant can be seen on every level- they use quality olive oil rather than corn oil from a vat, they rely on freshly ground spices for flavor rather than mostly using salt, they can source produce at the peak of it’s ripeness. This isn’t all “heirloom bean sprouts grown in a Swiss nunnery to Mozart” bullshit. The tomatos you can get at the grocery store are a pale imitation of a real tomato. A lot of the quality produce they use in fine restaurants are not readily available to the average Joe- and in any case the average Joe doesn’t have the knowledge that nice restaurants have to find the absolute best ingredients.

And good restaurants have skilled chefs that can take the time to put those ingredients to good use. A diner is never going to serve homemade pasta, simply because it takes a lot of time to make and it’d never be profitable. But a fine restaurant can invest in dishes that take a long time to make, use expensive ingredients, and take a level of skill.

And then of course you are also paying for the creativity of the head chef. Good restaurants put together surprising, novel, amazing flavors that your average chef just doesn’t have the vision, experience and skill to come up with. High-end dishes can be challenging, witty, thought-provoking, nostalgic…a chef who know their art is a lot like any other artist.

This isn’t to say you can’t get mind-blowing meals at that hole-in-the-wall taqueria you love, or at that place that gets their hamburgers just right. But it’s a different kind of mind-blowing experience. Not every restaurants really hits it right, even if they are expensive. But the right restaurant at the right time can offer a unique experience that, if you are in to that sort of thing, is absolutely worth the costs.

Think of it like clothing. You can get some nice looking stuff at TJ Maxx. You can get some fugly stuff at Armani. But if you can get the right suit with the right fit, a top-quality suit is going to do things to you that you never imagined. If you don’t really care about clothing, it doesn’t really matter. But if it’s something you really appreciate, having that perfect suit that makes you look like James Bond is something you’ll treasure for decades.

20

I’ve eaten at two restaurants that were pretty expensive. One was a Gordon Ramsay restaurant where the four course meal ran about $170, plus about another $40 or so for a couple of glasses of wine. It was simply outstanding. Carpaccio with foie gras, a lobster ravioli, duck entree, and a wonderful dessert with all sorts of interesting broths, cheeses, butters, chocolates, and other things thrown in. My companions had a beef Wellington that was just out of this world - I couldn’t come up with a criticism of that dish at all. It was perfect.

I also ate at a teppanyaki restaurant in Tokyo. The salad course was served in little pots so you would pick baby lettuce leaves yourself. The feature was a Kobe steak as thick as a Bible that melted in your mouth like nothing you could possibly imagine. I did not pay the bill that night, but I estimate the food probably ran about $250 a person, and the sake bill had to be very, very dear.

I agree that a large part of the experience is the service. Think of the difference in service at TGI Fridays and Mortons. Now improve the service by the same quantum leap from Mortons to these Michelin star type places.