The dish described in the OP doesn’t sound at all pretentious to me (it sounds like a pretty typical decent restaurant presentation to me), although the price is . Something like that I’d expect more in the $30-$40 range, at the most, even here in Chicago.
Hey, I like a very rare pan-seared steak also. But four ounces? Fuck that. When I go out for steak, which is not a particularly common occurrence, I want a real god damn piece of meat. And I sure as hell am not paying $85 for meat and taters. And I live in a town with some of the best restaurants in the world. And I’ve been to a lot of them. Most of them are great; some are like the one in the OP.
Like wine and stereo speakers, there’s a point of diminishing returns with food. Above a certain threshold, the product is not actually superior at all, and in fact may suck balls. At that point you’re just paying for a dick measuring contest.
I’m not going to condemn a restaurant because it sells a small steak. As I said, I prefer a larger portion. But, ahem, size isn’t everything. I’d rather have four ounces of quality steak than a 24 ounce T-bone at the Iron Skillet. And if I have a steak much bigger than 8 ounces, for example, I am pretty much a one course person. And trust me, I am no skinny beanpole.
Most of the time, I would not order a four ounce steak. But, if it was part of a multiple course menu, that might be the perfect size for me. Were it to be the only thing I was eating that evening, it wouldn’t work… for me. For my father, though, a salad then the entree as described in the OP, with a couple of glasses of wine, would leave him very happy indeed.
I don’t think satisfying tastes other than my own would qualify a restaurant as pretentious.
I’m actually very skeptical of the $85 price tag, unless it also included wine, tax, tip, and probably dessert. As Ravenman says, you just don’t see entrees costing nearly that much in any but, say, fifteen places nationwide, at a guess.
Or if you were at a hotel and ordered room service. In which case $85 might cover a Caesar salad, once all the fees were added on.
Well, then. Mr. Picky Eater, I take it you’re going back to your regular diet of chicken fingers and fries at Applebees?
Foodie thread? Cue the macro.
Don’t some people understand that there is a middle ground? There’s a time and place for the high-end dining establishments, the upscale chains at the lifestyle center in the nearby power suburb, and the Waffle House by the Interstate.
If you feel like steak, you presumably go out to a steakhouse. Four ounces of meat does not seem unreasonable to me–at a nice restaurant, about 6 oz. is all I really want, and I’m someone who likes to put away a lot of meat. However, at a nice restaurant, I don’t want to stuff myself silly. I want to enjoy an app or two, a main dish, a dessert, perhaps a cheese plate, a few drinks. If I want to eat 20 oz of steak, then I go to the steak & potato place. Presumably, the menu informed the diner of the fact that the steak portion was 4 oz, or at least I would hope so.
I could easily go either way on this debate.
In some places, if I spend $20-30 on a meal, I want to take home leftovers!
But I’ve got a friend who’s a chef and owns his own restaurant. I love his food. He does a six course tasting meal for $65 ($85 with wine flight). All the courses are small, but they taste absolutely wonderful. I clean each plate (sometimes tempted to pick up the plate and lick it clean) and go home stuffed but without leftovers. Yup, it’s expensive and we can’t do it often so it’s a real treat when we do.
Yes, I have been to a steakhouse. I suppose the roll-eyes were not obvious enough in my comment.
In addition to be completely accurate in the appraisal of the filet mignon, Villa also picked up on the same point I was trying to make.
To me, the OP sounds like he/she has never eaten in anything other than an Applebees/Texas Roadhouse/Lone Star/Outback type place, especially with the complaint about the way the filet was cooked.
MeanJoe
friedo:
I don’t think this is necessarily true, and I think the comparison to stereo speakers, in particular, is unfair. There are many valid reasons to pay more for food: the rarity, quality, and freshness of ingredients, novel taste combinations, innovative or unusual methods of preparation, creative and artful presentation, the personal attention of the chef, the restaurant’s general atmosphere, and so on. Now, those things may not be worth it to you or me in some instances, for whatever reason, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t make the meal actually “superior” in some respect.
I won’t pay money for mediocre food just for the fact of having paid the money; I’d rather have $4 chicken from Popeye’s than a bland $30 entree any day.
I’m with you. I was just in DC a couple weeks ago and had an excellent meal at a nicer seeming seafood place (Legal Seafood, Crystal City) got a tortilla, apple and goat cheese salad with avacado and red peppers in a chipotle orange dressing (damn that was good) and the Surf & Turf; a filet with port glazed roasted mushrooms, mashed potatoes and grilled shrimp and scallops and topped it off with two Makers doubles and stayed right at $60 bucks WITH tip. The whole nouvelle cuisine thing though is alive and well unfortunately.
On the other hand, you can get places like Moto here in Chicago who’s 10 course menu today (it changes often) features…
Except that these will be the very best possible (insert common sounding food here) that you have ever had, or are ever likely to have. They prepare, for instance the nitro-pinapple with a nitrogen deep freeze. The chef uses science like most chefs use culinary skills and it works and it’s worth it, if you’re a foodie.
Otherwise, you won’t like it at all.
Do those fees include a happy ending? IMO unless you’re wheeling in three carts of food, 85 bucks for a single room service meal is strong-armed robbery.
…Which reminds me of the caipirinha nitro I had at Minibar. Yummmmm. Ditto the frozen yogurt and honey dessert made with olive oil, honey powder, and yogurt frozen in liquid nitrogen. I can still taste that.
'Twas but a wee joke! Although I’m always truly shocked at how much they can get away with overcharging you for room service…not only is the food ridiculously overpriced (say, $14 for a pastry and some orange juice), but then they tack on tax, a service fee which is generally at least $4 – or more, if it’s tied to a percentage of the food price – and a tip is expected at the end. So while I’ve never had an $85 Caesar salad, I’ve definitely been forced into a $35 sandwich, when all’s said and done. If my work hadn’t been paying for it, I would have refused to do it…but, of course, that’s why they can get away with it in the first place.
I won’t comment on the pricing, but I HATE the presentation that cannot be consumed without destroying it.
Take the OP’s steak tower layer:
Layer 1: Sauce (that part is fine, and I do the same at home)
Layer 2: Mashed taters. Very nice, and you can do amazing things with potatoes with garlic, cheeses, seasonings, etc.
Layer 3: The steak. Nothing wrong with a 4 ounce filet.
Layer 4: The veggies.
Now, If I want a bit of steak, I have to shove the veggies aside, and once I start pressing down with my knife the pototoes goe squishing across the plate, which then costs me the ability to try small bits of the sauce that have been drawn onto the plate by sous chef who really just wants to be a artist.
Two bits in and my plate looks like hell, and the delicate flavors have been intermixed. To avoid this, I have to de-construct the tower - sliding the veggies to one side, and moving the steak to another. yes, this is not that hard - but come up with pretension that ALSO allows me to eat and still enjoy your presentation!
So if that’s not you’re thing, why are you there?
-FrL-
This, above almost everything else, is the kind of thing that makes me wish I was rich.
I would be so excited to see what the chef does with the above.
Well, anyway. Tonight it’s a $5 “Pizza Mia”* for me and my kids. :smack: 
-FrL-
Notice that’s “My Pizza” in translation. I always here a little whiney “myeh!” afterwards.
Did they not ask you how you wanted your steak cooked? I’ve been to a lot of nice restaurants and steakhouses in several cities, and they ALWAYS ask you how you want your steak cooked.
I think it’s entirely possible that you’re misjudging the size of the filet you were served. By my estimation, a 4 oz filet would be maybe 3/4 inches thick by 3.5 inches in diameter when cooked, or about the size of a Skoal can. I’m guessing it was somewhat bigger than that.
The price tag does seem astronomically high for that particular dish; $30-40 is more what I’d expect, unless it’s something like Kobe beef, or some other culinary oddity that you’d pay a premium for.
And remember, you ARE paying for the presentation, to some extent. It really depends on the restaurant; the less trendy and chic the place is trying to be, and the less silly the presentation will be.
And I’m with Algher, presentations that have to be mangled to eat take some of the fun out of it. Me and some friends had a “tuna tower” at a sushi joint a while back, and the waiter ended up mixing it all together into this sushi/rice/veggies/sauce glop that we ended up eating. It went from really cool looking to something that made me think “sushi casserole”. I was vaguely disappointed when that happened.
I think you and I are saying the same thing, Gadarene. I also love a (good) expensive restaurant for all the reasons you mentioned. But I don’t love it enough for $85.
As luck would have it, I just paid my credit card bill for this month. Last time I went to one of my favorite pricey steakhouses (since we’re talking about steak) I paid a total of $107 for myself and one friend, and that included wine and dessert. It was worth every penny, and there was no pretentious gloop sauce.
But if I am going to pay $85 for a meal for one person, it had better come with a side of blowjobs from Carmen Elektra and a complimentary kilo of the purest Columbian cocaine.
I concur. We ate at some pretentious restaurant in Washington DC years ago that had similar entrees and menu. It was not worth the money. I get impatient with fussy food. Food is supposed to nourish and sustain you, not be a fashion accessory. We did not go back.
How do you know it’s going to be the best carrot you’ve ever had? That takes arrogance regarding culinary skills to level of surreal. 
This is where I really get steamed. Pretentious waitrons need to be put in their place, at once and with vigor. Immediate vocal and written complaints to management are called for in such instances.
OTOH, a knowledgeable, friendly waiter can make such a place a delight to eat at. We recently dropped $300 on dinner at Mesa Grill, and $60 of that was a tip for a very competent waiter. He knew all the dishes, had some recommendations that weren’t pushing the “special,” and asked before committing any sin of presentation that might have seemed logical to him.