I really agree with Mahna Mahna. You are paying for the entire package, and if that is the kind of thing you enjoy, it can definitely be worth it.
My husband and I had the good fortune to dine at The French Laundry a few years back with a few other Dopers. Our price per head was a bit more than the price you’re considering, but it was without a doubt one the most pleasurable experiences of my life, and certainly one of the finest meals.
Since it’s too late to edit my previous post…
The same people run Bistro Vue & Cafe Vue.
Why don’t you start at the bottom & work your way up to the $250 a person menu?
(Darn. It’s lunch time. And none of my options sound as delicious.)
The most Ivylad and I spent on a meal was about $150 total at Emeril’s at Universal Studios.
The food was lovely, the service was impeccable, and it was well worth it.
I couldn’t see spending $500 for two people. Emeril’s is about as fancy as we’ll probably get.
I’ve always believed it’s necessary to acquire a palate for the finer things before you drop $250 on them. Sure, maybe that $100 bottle of wine is that good, but unless your taste in wine has been refined you’d never think it was worth it.
$250AUD (that’s $220 in American) seems maybe a little expensive for anything but a completely perfect and sublime experience. Here in Chicago, the avant-garde darling is Alinea (Gourmet Magazine’s 2006 Restaurant of the Year), and their 23-course tour is $195, and their 12-course tasting menu is $135. Granted, the portions are small, but I haven’t heard of anyone coming out as anything but stuffed from the tour.
There are a few restaurants I would be happy to pay $200 for. Alinea is one of them. The French Laundry is another.
I’m not in as urban an area as Melbourne, but my favorite fine restaurant around here is Christophe’s. It’s chef-owned, and there’s a prix fixe menu for about $45 a head (cheaper on Tues and Wed), and a tasting menu for two that ends up being about $75 per person (more with the paired wines).
I love food, and have definitely been taken out to places more expensive (done the 10 course tasting menu at places a few times), and if the experience of fine dining appeals to you, if you like seeing how your (various?) wine complements the various dishes, and you have the money to spend, it can most definitely be worth it. If you’re not into the ‘experience,’ then $250 bucks a head is probably a bit much, and you can definitely find very good food for less than that.
It depends on the average diner. I adore a fabulous, pricey restaurant, even if I only go once in a decade. It is worth every penny to me because I’m paying for more than the food.
My husband, on the other hand, is a beanies ‘n’ weenies kind of guy and simply cannot justify expensive (and frequently small) food. He’d have what the family calls, “the cocksucker face” for a month afterward, regardless of whether or not the food was delicious. That’s just how he rolls.
I tend to do the nicer dining experiences with his ex -wife.
I’ll second the steakhouse option. I took my girlfriend to Primehouse in Manhattan for her birthday and I ended up spending over $250 (not including $100 in gift cards we had). That also included the porterhouse for two (romantically eaten Lady and the Tramp style), a $90 bottle of wine (tasted good to me), some apps and sides. To me, the cost is worth it. I’d also pay a lot for decent sushi. Other options, I’m less inclined to go overboard.
I think the latter. In fact, I’m pretty close to being a “serious foodie”, and I’m not sure I’d be all that thrilled with it. I’m guessing it’ll be a bit like the famous “French Laundry” restaurant in Napa, here in CA. You see copy-cat restaurants like that popping up all over, especially since they got 3 stars from Michelin. I haven’t been, but a few of my friends who have reported back mixed reviews. Good, but you have to be really into food to enjoy it.
Fine dining, to me, is worth every penny. I am an absolute foodie with the misfortune of not being a very good cook, so I love to pay other people to do things to food that I can’t.
That said, there are limits to what I can justify spending on food. I consider a fine-dining experience for two to be worth somewhere between $100-200, tip included. Where I live, I can get a meal that will turn my knees to jelly and have me speaking in tongues for the lower end of that price range, easily, and so I would not even consider paying $250 a head before wine or tip. When I spend $50-75 a person, I’m already practically getting my feet rubbed and my face fanned at the table, so what more could they possibly offer me that would be worth another $200+?
I say google “fine dining (yourlocation)” and see what else you can come up with, because though you may enjoy the food at that place quite a lot, I’m willing to bet you can find a place you’d enjoy just as much for half or less of that price.
We did Emeril’s when we were on our honeymoon. Same location. We sat at the ‘food bar’ which was an incredible experience. It sits overlooking the saute/sauce/brick oven station, and they encourage you to talk to the chef at the station.
Ivylass has the service described to a T. After our visit, when we got home, we received a nice card thanking us for our visit, and congratulating us on our marriage. We dropped about $200 total for the two of us, but there were a fair number of wine glasses emptied out at that dinner, and we were there for a few hours at least. Worth every penny!
The odd part of the food bar, was that the booking agent who made our reservation seemed to think of that seating as a negative, rather than the HUGE plus it was to a couple who love to cook (and eat!).
Testify brother, testify.
I can’t tell you the number of decent restaurants that I’ve left dissapointed from, thinking “My <fill in the dish here> is better than that. I can’t believe I paid that much for such muck.”
Ditto this. From what the OP describes of themselves, I picture them being completely disappointed. As for me, I’ll go to a pricey restaurant, but to me, this is beyond pricey.
By coincidence, a friend and I had dinner at a place in New York last week where the final tab came to about $250 each. For the price, we got six courses, a glass of bubbly beforehand, and a bottle of wine with dinner.
I thought it was absolutely worth it, a very, very good meal. At the same time, I can imagine, say, my mom being baffled or even offended at the price tag. But then, she never, ever does “fine dining,” whereas I do a $150-or-more meal on average fifteen times a year.
I’ll second what most everyone else is saying: If you don’t have the experience and knowledge to recognize what $250 is buying you, then you’re probably better off doing something else.
I’ll expand a bit, too:
Add to this list “the skill, experience, and knowledge of the chef.” (This presumes you’re dining at a place where the chef is actually in the kitchen, and not a celebrity-chef joint where the famous face rarely picks up a pan in between TV appearances. I don’t go to those places.)
The New York restaurant I mentioned above? Every single everything on every single plate was cooked perfectly. The venison was exactly right. The liver was exquisite, with flawless texture, and cut beautifully with complementary mousse and gelee. The duck was some of the best I’ve ever had. Everything reflected the careful attention and lengthy experience of the chef; I paid what I paid in order to be fed a meal in which every ingredient was presented at its very best advantage.
Or consider Wylie Dufresne, the molecular mad scientist of New York. (The meal I describe above wasn’t at his place; I’m using him as a more illustrative example.) Check out these plates. I will happily drop $250-300 at this place because I am buying uncountable hours of Wylie’s time. That’s what it takes, days and weeks fiddling around in the kitchen, experimenting with ingredients and equipment, to come up with the dishes you see in the link. He’s not skimming Julia Child’s writeup on cassoulet and throwing that on the menu; he’s at the height of his profession, and he deserves to be paid accordingly.
And yet, I would never take my mother to Wylie’s restaurant. It would be totally lost on her. No knock on her, she’s a lovely human being, but she just plain doesn’t have the palate to grasp what Wylie’s food is all about, and she’d be the first to admit it.
If it isn’t clear by now, I’m joining the chorus: I think your $250 would be better spent elsewhere. Take $100 of it and go to a classy neighborhood Italian place, the kind of restaurant where they make their own pasta from scratch, and use the other $150 to treat yourself some other way.
Because the answer to the original question is “yes, unless you have to ask, in which case, no.”
OTOH, (or am I agreeing with you?) you’d have to pay me a lot more than $250 before I would any of that. That’s one of my major problems with “chefs.” They try to foist off offal and such as “delicacies.” Forget that. Take a piece of pork and make it perfect. That’s all I ask. Give me the Ultimate Roasted Chicken, not Dove Eggs coddled in Lark’s Vomit with Sea Urchin Spine demi-glace. Gack.
I’ll eat at the local taqueria instead.
There is no better meat in the world than a properly prepared sweetbread. 
Nothing wrong with trying something new every now and then, if that’s your cup of tea. I can get chicken, pork, beef, etc, almost anywhere, sometimes I like a little variety. Smoked eel, horseradish and beetroot or lambs’ tongues and anchovies may not be a staple, but for me life would be dull if I never experimented.
So I’m guessing you don’t partake in tacos de sesos, tacos de tripo, or menudo? Oh well, your loss. 
Offal/organ meat is a wonderful thing, and one of my favorite indulgences in the world is foie gras with a little glass of Tokaji wine. When I’m feeling less posh, Braunschweiger with mustard on rye will do.
Also, you generally have choices at these restaurants and if you don’t like offal, you don’t have to partake. In Cervaise’s menu, there was only one thing that’s offal, and liver is pretty pedestrian.
I agree. We went to Victoria and Albert’s at WDW, and it was a couple hundred bucks for the two of us, no wine, but it was worth it. Mostly because I got to try some delicacies I’d never had (foie gras, Kobe beef), and because everything was done so well, and partly due to the service (each table has two servers). One thing that really surprised me was that foie gras to me was kind of eh, but the thing I really remember as being one of the most fabulous dishes I’ve ever tasted was red curry squash soup with salmon fillet. That’s nothing I would seek out, and it sounded rather boring - but it was culinary perfection. Both the idea of what flavors to combine and the flawless execution of the preparation. It was a fun experience, and we’ll be going back once or twice a decade.
That said, I think the menu listed above is a total overpriced wankfest. The combination of ridiculously recondite ingredients with the HUGE price makes me cautious.
As others have said, a nice high end steakhouse will have delicious food and expert waitrons to pamper you, and cost much less. That might be the way to go.
Damn I miss Le Manoir. Though the last time I was there I had such a bad cold I might just as well have been eating cardboard. I would have cancelled but it was a family get together, and Dad was paying anyway.