Yes. The food and service generally live up to the cost (yes that is not universal) and I like them the same reason I like nice hotels: it’s fun to be pampered.
If it’s just lunch with coworkers on a workday, my main reason is that I can’t have alcohol. If I’m going to pay for a decent meal at a restaurant, I usually want a beer, wine, or cocktail to accompany it. At most USA companies, even one drink is completely unacceptable.
Shagnasty is right. You can eat well in NJ… and at some places that won’t break the bank.
That said, Athena has a great point too. When fine dining is your one big meal of the day (and you skipped lunch just out of expectation) there is nothing worse than being disappointed.
I’m going to sound like Frasier if I mention that some places are just… whats a good word that really says it… Gritty? :dubious:
In a state known for Portuguese seafood, you’re really going to serve some seafood that tastes like you rolled it in salt, stuck it between an old saddle and a dirty horse and rode on it all day?
Or the fine restaurant that had beach sand all over the tiles floor? (That place smelled like two track teams had a barefoot run on the beach, but were invited in to pick their feet before the bus trip home.)
Or that one place that had a fly problem so severe, each table should have had an AA gun?
But three problem spots doesn’t ruin a state, especially when one out of every five strip malls seems to have a small hidden gem restaurant with food just as amazing as some of the expensive places.
The only time I’ve ever been to one was at the fancy rotating restaurant atop a big fancy hotel in Phoenix, AZ.
The setting, the service, everything was great.
The “nouvelle cuisine” consisted of tiny bits of very ornate food, sitting in the middle of plates. Not enough to feed a cat.
I had to go to a McDonalds afterward, to get a real goddamn meal.
Never again, thank’ee.
I don’t do dress-up. For me, ‘fine’ dining means that the food is better than what I make at home, or it’s something that I make very seldom because of the work involved. That goes for burger shacks and places with fois gras alike. I get no pleasure out of paying $150 for two people when the food is mediocre. A great thing about the internet is that you can look at restaurant menus before going. If they’re using screwball ingredients or I don’t like what they’re doing to the food, it’s a non starter, and Portland certainly has its share of that sort of foo-foo crap.
I like dressing up every so often. I like having a ‘fine dining experience’ every so often. But I don’t seem to experience food in that orgasmic sense that foodies do. In my entire long life which has including eating out since I was a small child, I’ve had about ten memorably good meals, which often enough have more to do with the company and/or how hungry I was than the food itself. One of the best meals I ever had was homemade carnitas burritos assembled on the hood of a truck. Another was blackberry cobbler made over a campfire from wild blackberries we children had picked in a clearing in the mountains. I guess I’m not a city girl.
‘Every so often’ is about twice a year, with my husband and/or daughter. The rest of my dining out is about solving the problem of not being able to get home for lunch.
Yes. I’ve eaten at 2 Michelin starred restaurants already this year. Wore a dress and heels both times too, though like mentioned upthread in SF you can probably wear jeans everywhere. I keep a running list of places I want to go to next Octavia and August1Five being tops, though my list actually is a mixture of choices from fine dining to brewpubs to a food truck on a particular corner, and I try to knock something off my list every month or so. On the other hand I had a killer burrito for lunch last week and got in and out for $12.
To some people here I get that it seems like a waste of money or pretentious to be a foodie and enjoy high-end dining, but it’s my money, earned honestly and dining out is my hobby. For me eating fine meals falls into the “spend money on more experiences, instead of more stuff” category that we all talk about but rarely do. The whole thing gives me enormous pleasure. By the same token I don’t knock my bestie (who knits) for spending $75 dollars on 3 skeins of wool for a sweater when I can and do get a sufficiently warm one from Target for $12.
Being a foodie doesn’t mean you have to wear a suit to spill the au jus on. 
High prices don’t always mean good food, either. We like trying new restaurants as much as anyone, but quite often a snooty place just means $60 for a rib eye that is no better than the pub down the street. Michelin places are a good bet, and I’ve paid quite a bit for meals that were a bit of heaven. We don’t have any in Portland as yet, but there are a lot of James Beard winning chefs here.
Of course I do! I’ve had some of my finest meals in fine restaurants!
I prefer cuisines I don’t care to cook for myself…it’s a great disappointment to finish dinner thinking “I coulda done this better at home for one-sixth the cost.” Also paying over ten dollars for a cocktail with two dollars worth of booze, and fifty dollars for a bottle of wine that retails for twenty. Not having to clean up or wash dishes is a plus, however.
I’m another one of us who considers an excellent dinner in a great restaurant an entertainment expense.
OK, let’s go a bit deeper on what kind of fine dining I get in Missoula.
The best restaurant here is The Pearl Cafe, a nice little French-focused restaurant with an eye to local ingredients and modern (that is, not too fussy, not too elaborate) dishes and presentation. Here’s the menu.
The French cuisine focus alone sets it apart. The restaurants the next step down are all either American or Asian (there’s a nice Thai restaurant, in fact, and a nice sushi restaurant as well), and the other restaurants on the same level (of which there are two) are either American or experimental. So eating nice is the best way to get French food, and I like French food.
Also, this is Montana. We don’t treat steak like a fine dining only thing here. There’s a steakhouse just south of me, in Lolo, which does steak just about as well as it can be done, and their sense of decor is, uh, taxidermy. Tasteful taxidermy, but plenty of dead animals staring down at you. Therefore, the Pearl has things like bison and pork paté and duckling on a charcuterie plate, and reliably has duck confit on the main dinner menu. Ain’t no second-tier restaurants doing duck confit, and I wouldn’t do it, either. They do have “normal” steak, but they also have steak in a green peppercorn and brandy sauce.
I certainly get the point about food quality being independent of restaurant class. There’s a restaurant down in Hamilton, Nap’s Grill, which does the best burgers and fries in the whole region, if not the state, and their sense of style is license plates nailed to the wall and serving your food on plastic trays.
No, there is no food I want to spend that much money on.
When I was able to eat, I just wanted something I liked the taste of, and a Coke. A Chipotle burrito and a Coke would have been my favorite, but I’d go up to a Red Robin burger type food for a birthday or something.
I don’t dress up, I don’t, or didn’t, linger over my food, and I get antsy after a certain amount of time at the table.
I guess I was a cheap date, and it didn’t change at all after marriage.
We’ve eaten at Ruth’s Chris, Emeril’s, and Bern’s for dinner and birthdays. We don’t do it all the time, but it’s nice to get dressed up and have an experience.
But this place is a blast too, live music and fantastic food, and you can get a lot of bang for your buck. I had Ivylad’s 50th birthday party there, and providing three meats plus sides and one adult beverage for 16 people set me back just $500 (oh, and a whole Black Forest Cake for the dessert.)
I don’t do dress-up. Eight years since the last time I wore a tie, 19 years for coat and tie, and over 35 years since I wore an actual suit.
And I wouldn’t pay more than $35 per person for a meal (including drinks and whatever else) even if I could afford it.
Just a barbarian, I guess…
Here’s the dinner menu from a current favorite “fine dining” establishment that doesn’t require fancy dress, is located in an old pub about a block from the Old Vic theatre, doesn’t cost a fortune, and you can even have a pint of bitter with your food instead of wine.
We’ve been to this place a half-dozen times over the past several years and never had a bite of food that was less than swoon-worthy.
I once really loved getting dressed up and lingering over a leisurely pricy meal for hours. These days, I’m much more…ahem…low-maintenance, and I’d rather have really good food in a more casual environment. Case in point: The Publican in Chicago. Great food, not too expensive, kid-friendly, and come-as-you-are (as long as you’re not in your Walmart sweats).
Sorry, missed edit window.
Somebody mentioned Ruth’s Chris above. I really wouldn’t consider that fine dining as such. I’ve been dragged there a few times. It’s a corporate place in all senses of the word…someplace to meet over an expense account and a sales pitch – where you aren’t expected to really enjoy or linger over the food, but it’s non-challenging and anybody can find something they’ll tolerate within 2 minutes of glancing at the menu. It’s like an upscale Applebee’s, only you’re meeting with some vendor there instead of your picky in-laws.
One of my favorites! Though truly… I wouldn’t necessarily say “not too expensive” unless you’re comparing it to the super-fancy (Alinea, etc). At least, I’ve managed to spend several hundred there on dinner for two. I guess you could get away with less, but I’m… not very good at that.
I have a hard time enjoying anything that is, or feels, expensive. It just feels mentally guilty. Only way I could enjoy it would be if I’d somehow won it as a coupon/gift card or something. And even then, having waiters or staff who cater to me too much, makes me uncomfortable; I don’t like feeling like I’m a burden to people.
As a professional cook, I have absolutely no desire to sit in a “fine dining” establishment.
Chain restaurants aren’t fine dining, to me.