“And I barely eat at fast food places anymore. I recently found out that THEY overcharge more than the high priced places!!”
I’d just like to make it clear that I quit eating the fast food places for health reasons rather than not being worth the money.
Say what you want, But Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee really is proof that god exists and wants us to be happy(with apologies to ben franklin)
It’s not simply a case of expensive = better. For some people (myself included) what some restaurants charge is simply worth it, in our opinions. Inexpensive food can be delicious and the most expensive restaurant can serve a pice of overwrought crap masquerading as haut cuisine. In fact, I don’t think that anyone, at least in this thread, has said that inexpensive food can’t be delicious. Most of my friends consider me a terrible (or very good, depending on your point of view) food snob, but I love good homemade meatloaf as much as the next person. Nor is it fair to compare the food we might moan and giggle over at a three star restuarant to the food a good, but untrained home cook would serve us at a dinner, it’s apples and oranges, so to speak.
Personally, I can’t understand why anyone, unless they’re rolling in money, would walk into a dealership and purchase a new car, when a 3 year old car is very nearly as reliable and almost half the cost. For the people who wish to spend their money on new cars, more power to them. I really don’t wonder how they force themselves to carpool two days a week in their neighbor’s 5 year old Civic without throwing themselves from the passenger seat in shame. It’s simply a matter of what is important to you and how you value it. For myself, and a number of the other posters in this thread, the experience of sitting down to dinner at Alain Ducasse, Boulud, Le Bernardin or some other three or four star restaurant is the equivalent of someone buying a brand new car, when they could have saved a huge chunk of change and bought an older vehicle instead. It’s not something that we, or at least most of us whose net worth doesn’t require scientific notation, do very often. But when we do, it’s very much worth it, to us.
You do realize that when you read about thousand-dollar-per-person tabs, the big thing driving the bill is wine, right? It usually means the patrons ordered some uber-rare vintage where there’s only like ten bottles of the stuff in the whole wide world and so it costs an arm and a leg (or several arms and legs, actually).
I’ve eaten at several of New York’s better restauarants, and can’t recall anywhere exceeding $150/head for the food. The wine, on the other hand, can rapidly escalate the bill.
On the other hand, I’ve never eaten at Alain Ducasse…
Being a self-described “sushi-holic”, I can say that I have spent as much as $70 for a solo trip to the sushi bar. And nobody even had to cook it. My reason for this is that I absolutely love the taste and I find the atmosphere to be extrememly relaxing, even soothing. It is expensive mainly because freshness counts and the varieties of fish are from all over the world.
Now, I used to spend that much in an evening for cocaine. That was destroying me. This on the other hand is quite healthy. So I feel I have made better choice, vice-wise.
I have much more of a problem spending 4 bucks for a beer in a bar. Thats 24 friggin bucks for a 6-pack I could buy for 4 dollars in a grocery store.
In my driveway are:
That is why I have eaten at McDonalds, Ruby Tuesdays. and Le Bec Fin.
Despite my light-hearted ribbing that set off this hijack in the other thread, I do not consider it unreasonable to spend such crazy amounts of money in a restaurant. I don’t spend those amounts myself, since I’m on this damn student budget and I lack a sufficient appreciation for wine to justify expensive bottles. I intend to correct both of these deficiencies eventually.
Dr. J
Well, if someone wants to spend lots of money at a restaurant, then more power to them. It’s their money. Just don’t expect me to understand it entirely. ;j
And the XJ6 sounds like a nice car. Is it a Jaguar, by any chance?
I think the most I have ever spend on dinner for two was upwards of $75, before the tip. It was a nice (but not terribly fancy) French restaurant, we had appetizers, interesting entrees, it was all very good and the waiter was perfect in that he was always there when we needed him and never obtrusive. I’d say the evening was worth it.
I’ve spent around $300 for dinner for four, but a good deal of that was the wine - it was at a fondue place, and the food itself only came to around $140. It was a nice relaxing setting and I think we spent three hours there, eating slowly (you have to as you pretty much cook the food yourself), drinking good wine, and talking. Again, I feel it was worth it (though it’s not something I’d do on a regular basis).
I don’t understand people who think that non-expensive restaurants are not worth eating at, though. 99% of my trips to restaurants are places where it comes to under $20 a head, usually a lot under that. I have a good time going to Red Lobster, Steak & Ale, or El Chico, but it’s a different kind of experience than what you get from going to Fogo de Chao, The Melting Pot, or that French place whose name I forgot. If I just want something to fill my stomach I’ll just get carryout from Taco Bell.
I’m getting homesick because it sounds to me like you live in the D/FW area. 
I live in an area without such fine restuarants. The best place to eat in town is Garfields or Red Lobster.
Once I took 3 other people to Fogo de Chao in, Addison I think, and the bill came out to about 200 dollars. Nobody in the party were wine drinkers and we pretty much stick to soda, iced tea, or water.
Jurhael, I’m sure there are plenty of things you might own or wish to own that others think is wasteful or silly. Just remember that worth is in the eye of the beholder. I don’t see how anyone could spend 100 bucks for a bottle of wine but then again I really have no appreciate for wine. However I do have an appreciation of fine seafood and meat so I might not mind paying out the nose for a lobster bigger then my head.
Marc
That does seem a bit high, as the price is $39.95 a head currently, and I don’t think they charge exorbitant amounts for non-alcoholic drinks there…well, with tax, that would come close to $200 I guess.
I think it’s a pretty good deal, though - all you can eat meat brought to your table, yum!
A few years ago I could not conceive of spending more than, say, twenty dollars on a meal at a restaurant.
Then my brother, a chemical engineer no less, made an abrupt shift in direction in his life and became a chef. And a damned good one. One side-effect of this event has been my expanded appreciation of the artistry involved in turning ordinary foods into wonderful tasting creations. Consequently, last year I spent $125 on a tasting menu, with wine (I actually tried 10 different glasses!), at a fabulous place in Louisville. I’d do it again in a instant, it was a terrific experience. In fact, my brothers and I are currently planning a whirlwind gustatory adventure leapfrogging from dining establishment to dining establishment, from Louisville to New York via Chicago, at the end of this month.
However, I know this is not for everyone; so what? To each his own. And hell, I still stop off at the local White Castle every once in a while and enjoy that too.
But that might be a whole 'nother thread… 
They might be like me. I buy them new, and drive them for about 10 years.I might be able to do that with a 3 year-old car, but I couldn’t be sure how well it was taken care of.
Doreen
Sure is. And I wish that I could get a Jag, preferably an XK8 ragtop in British Racing Green. Alas, it is not to be. But I can dream.
The best thing about dining in the “expensive” restaurants is that the wait staff doesn’t pressure you to hurryupandeat so they can seat another party. They expect you to sit there for hours.
In places like TGIF I’ve had the waiter slap the bill down immediately after serving the entree and say, “I’ll take that up when you’re ready.” Nothing like a nice, relaxing dinner!
Still. There is a limit on how much I feel comfortable about spending regardless of the food quality or ambience. For instance, I am very uncomfortable spending more than $30 on a bottle of wine in any restaurant ($15 for a bottle I buy myself). To me, the difference between a $30 bottle of wine and a $300 bottle of wine is so minute that it’s simply not worth the extra cash. OR, perhaps, the enjoyment I’d get out of sipping a $300 bottle of wine would be enormously overshadowed by the guilt I’d feel in spending $300 of on a bottle of wine. So it’s not worth it to me.
The most expensive place I have ever dined was The Stonehenge, a quaint little bed-and-breakfast that overlooked a little pond in Ridgefield, CT. Looked darling. So we took a friend of ours to dinner. Spent more than $350 for 3 people. And I STILL get ulcers when I think about what a waste it was. Quaint my ass. They FLEECED us!
Jurhae, something else I don’t think that you are considering is the issue of disposable cash. Let’s compare diners A and B. Diner A has $100 per month disposable cash and Diner B has $1,000 per month. Now proportionally Diner B can spend $100 compared to Diner A and they’re equal. Non-proportionally, Diner B could spend $910 on a meal to be left with the same amount of cash as Diner A that month.
There comes a point beyond which $50 to B feels like $5 to A. In this context paying more to go to one restaurant rather than another doesn’t really make much difference.
At a personal level, chime me in on the side of those saying that they feel a higher priced restaurant is often many times better. Frankly, I think the food in 90% of restaurants is crap. I’m not even a very good chef and yet I can make meals that taste much better than most restaurants. Worst of all are the places that offer what amounts to re-heated frozen food, deep-fried fatballs and fries with everything. Ugh. From this point of view, I feel totally ripped off paying for the $15 piece o’ crap. And yet when I go to a good restaurant I get something that I couldn’t have prepared in a million years. That’s worth a lot to me.
Given a choice, I would always go to the good restaurant and pay $50 for my food (let’s ignore wine for now) rather than the shitty one and pay $15. In my opinion I get much better value in the former and enjoy the experience.
And the kabbess, being a much better cook than me, feels even more strongly about this than I do. Throw in the aforementioned disposable income (and three months spent without a cooker - long story) and the result is a lot of money spent in restaurants. I don’t regret one penny.
pan
I cannot conceive of a meal for which I would pay anything more than about $30 for. For me, eating is simply an alternative to starving, and so-called crap (which, ultimately, it’s all going to become anyway) does the job just as well as, and in most cases, better than, expensive meals (speaking only for myself, of course).
I, for one, don’t wish to pay for “ambience”, I want to pay for food. After a certain point, the price of a meal begins to be less about the materials and preparation / serving costs, and more about the eliteness of the restaurant; those are the places I have no use for. Regardless of my disposable income, Claim Jumper is about as “elite” as I will ever get.
Admittedly, my senses of taste and smell are dulled (if not outright damaged), so maybe there is something I’m missing about these high-priced meals. But, since my senses aren’t going to improve during this lifetime, I guess I’ll just never know the joy of spending an inordinate amount of money to fill my gut for a day 
Guys who say stuff like this, I put on the same level as guys who say “Sex is no big deal. I only do it for procreative purposes.”
Okay, Sport, but have you ever considered you might be missing OUT on something? Isn’t life on this bleak bardo horrid enough that you shouldn’t be taking ADVANTAGE of some of the passing pleasures that are available?
As to the further statement, “How do you deal with meals that AREN’T prepared by master chefs of the finest possible ingredients?”…I’m reminded of a friend of mine who said he’d never take psychedelic drugs, because, the next day, you wouldn’t be TRIPPING any more, and how could you deal with ordinary reality?
Spark’s Steak House, my friend. Makes Outback taste like shoe leather. The steak alone is over $30 (and I mean just the steak, no sides). But try it once and I guarantee you will not be upset at the cost of the meal.
(One of these days, I’ll get down to Peter Luger’s, which is supposed to be the end-all, be-all of steak).
So I don’t get a huge charge out of dining. So what? My life is then nothing but a joyless pit of despair? I’ve eaten big expensive food before. I’ve done the four star restaurant thing. At the end, I’d eaten a meal. I was no more satisfied at the end then if I’d eaten anythig else, just poorer.
I get my joy elsewhere. I prefer to spend my money on things other than stuff I’m going to eventually digest and poop. There’s not a hole in my soul shaped like Fine Dining.