P S Restaurant maybe. But I think elmwood’s description is accurate - it’s more like “a step above middle end” rather than “fine dining”.
Anchorage, AK. There are restaurants that would like you to believe that they’re upscale, and the prices are certainly upscale, but the food is ordinary. Of course, nobody but tourists or pretentious assholes dresses for dinner there. Or anything else, for that matter.
Bamako, Mali. Upscale is getting a fork for your rice.
Lisbon, Portugal. They just don’t do upscale there.
San Miguel: joke. The large population referred to are cows. Does San Miguel even have one restaurant?
Santa Cruz: wrong. You just didn’t look hard enough. There are quite expensive and also very good restaurants (not necessarily the same ones). It is a resort town with many wealthy culturally sophisticated residents. Most of the highest quality restaurants are small, sometimes tiny. And, I don’t think the best ones are downtown. Look in the neighboring towns of Aptos, Capitola, Soquel.
If you want a list I’d have to work too hard, so just believe me.
The Kitchen
Biba
Mulvaney’s
Ella
I’ve only ever eaten at The Grange at lunch, but I thought it was pretty good.
There are two Michelin starred restaurants in Cumbria, is that too far for an evening?
Yeah, I don’t understand the Philadelphia or the Sydney comment. In Philadelphia, even if you’re talking about past decades, Le Bec-Fin was considered one of the best high-end French restaurants in the country starting shortly after it opened in 1970. And the fancy hotels (Bellevue Stratford, etc) have always had fancy dining rooms. Nowadays, there are a lot of high-end restaurants in Philadelphia. (Bookbinder’s was a seafood restaurant and not an English restaurant, anyway.) And Sydney has its share of upscale restaurants (assuming you mean Sydney, Australia). I don’t think that’s a recent development, either.
Guess you never went to Belcanto.
Agreeing with Salem, Oregon. Which is weird, because it does have a university, but unlike Corvallis, Portland, Eugene, and Ashland, it’s just got nothing.
What about Da Vinci’s?
I used to travel for business to Santa Cruz twice a year. The locals never had any problem finding somewhere to eat on an expense report in Santa Cruz or the Santa Cruz area - maybe not “very high end” - but honestly, there are only a few hundred very high end restaurants in the world - but with table cloths, a good wine list, a $50+ steak, quality food and pretensions.
Might be good, but I’ve never heard from anyone who’s eaten there and when I ask Salemites old and new where to eat, they say “Corvallis.”
Heck, even Fu Lin’s on Bowman and Markham has actual table cloths at dinner and it’s not even under glass? We do have a few upscale restaurants here in Little Rock like Sonny Williams’ Steak Room at the River Market. Well any restaurant where you’ll spend $77 for a steak, asparagus, mashed potatoes, and a salad is pretty upscale to me.
But, yeah, Little Rock is not known for having great restaurants. I don’t eat at a lot of upscale restaurants anyway but we have a dearth of mid-priced restaurants that are any good. We have a few, certainly, but the selection is poor.
We’re only 25,000 or 30,000 people, but even with the Shakespeare Festival, the number of really upscale places ($40 a plate or more and people wearing suit and tie) is pretty slim. I can only think of two, maybe three off the top of my head, and they actually close for a month when the tourists leave. We’ve got plenty of perfectly nice restaurants in the $12 to $20 a plate range, which is just fine with me.
Ashland is not an apples-to-apples comparison, is what I’m saying.
I’m not sure if it’s middle end or a step above, but there’s also a restaurant in the Ramada in Cortland that isn’t downscale, at least they have a good selection of local wines.
I can’t think of many restaurants on the West Coast or Midwest where suit and tie is normal. My husband got to eat at The French Laundry on a business trip once. I know he didn’t pack a suit - or even a jacket and tie. And I don’t think anyone would argue that it isn’t an upscale restaurant.
Agree, out here we don’t need no stinkin dress codes. Apparently. Only place where people regularly dress up to go out to is the opera, and I guess if you’re getting an academy award you have to.
In Minneapolis we don’t even bother to dress up for the opera. And we don’t give out Academy Awards so no one has to dress up for that :).
My husband doesn’t even own a suit - he does own a jacket and slacks which he wears for job interviews, and some weddings and funerals. He certainly wouldn’t pack it for a business trip with the guys at Facebook (it was Facebook who sprung for the French Laundry). I suspect most of Facebook’s staff spooks at the sight of a suit.
When I lived in Albuquerque, that was my poor-but-happy period. I can’t think of any upscale restaurants that were in that city even though at half a million population it was the biggest in New Mexico. Maybe I just didn’t pay attention since I was so broke all the time, but I can’t recall any there. Same with the capital, Santa Fe. People are all pretty laid back, and I don’t remember anyone dressing up for much of anything let alone to go out to dinner.
I live just outside of Flint, Michigan. Which has some very good restaurants but nothing I’d call “upscale” - this entire county, even the very wealthy parts, is extremely blue collar. The closest thing I’d consider even remotely “upscale” is the Redwood Lodge in Grand Blanc. But still, it’s basically a brewery/steakhouse and they don’t have a dress code - that really wouldn’t work around here.
Also I see on their home page they have numerous misspellings and palate is spelled palette. :rolleyes: So, not upscale.
I’m not talking extreme high end, but still the restaurants are mostly middle of the road. Not a good selection either, too many pizza/pasta places.
I love Santa Cruz, but come to think of it, there is no high end shopping either, only American Apparel, Forever 21, or Gap.
No chic department stores, which is cool.