In that case, there may not have been Kobe or Wagyu cuts on the menu. 
Thanks for the correction, LTL!
Still, unless it’s thick enough to eat with a fork, I’m going to need some way of getting at it without horrifying everyone else in the dining room.
Maybe if I ask for it to be served on the side, in a ramekin…
I don’t have time to go through all the sites, but I checked out Uncle Jack’s, the first link. The $100 steak is indeed Kobe Beef.
They also have an $85 steak.
I don’t know about you, but my days of eating 24 oz of steak in one sitting (even with a bone) are long, long gone. That feeds three, at least. Heck, my wife and I could split the $40 24 oz. NY Strip along with a pair of salads and be content.
ETA: Old Homestead’s $195 steak is 10 oz. of Kobe Beef.
Any time.
I don’t mind blowing disposable income on interesting food, but I really don’t get the Kobe beef burgers. E.g from Uncle Jack’s above: Ground Kobe Beef Burger: 49.00. Why would you pay that much money for a cut of meat that’s going to be ground up and then have the taste masked by a bun, tomato, lettuce, and possibly ketchup?
I completely agree.
I had the kobe burger for lunch a while back at Blue Point in DC. Not my fault - its in the building and I wasn’t paying. $18 and I make a much better burger, as indeed does 5 Guys.
It struck me as well as a waste, and though the gorganzola and onions were pleasant, they kind of overpowered anything impressive about the meat.
[johncleese] “Or perhaps M’sieur would prefer ze bucket?” [/johncleese]
Waiter spins the plate
“You’re getting sleepy…sleepy…you’re pulling out your VISA. You want to tip heavily. In fact, the more you tip, the more satisfied you feel…”
To each his own. Me? I don’t want to leave a restaurant feeling like they’ve tried to impregnate me via the bill.
[Hyacinth Bucket]”…its pronounced bouquet.” [/Hyacinth Bucket]
Everything passe is nouveau again.
I have. Wasn’t a super-fancy restaurant lie these, but it’s happened. When I eat at a restaurant, I expect I’ll have enough food for extra if I need it, because they don’t know me and don’t know how much I want to eat. If I’m not super-hungry, I may have some left over; well and good. But if the portions come up short, I won’t go back. I’m not asking for a gargantuan amount, but I don’t go eat at places just so I can have marginally interesting food. It’s not like I couldn’t cook it if I wanted to. I go to have a large, filling, tasty meal without fuss.
If they can’t manage that, then no matter how great the food is, they failed.
That’s the thing–I generally go out to eat stuff I can’t cook at home. Anything I can make at home, I do, because I love to cook.
I once had a meal similar to the one described in the OP. It made me want to ralph.
Yeah, i’m wondering if he’s ever going to be bothered coming back to fill out the story.
He does, though, have something of a track record of starting stupid or confusing Pit threads, and then never really following up, especially when people don’t immediately agree with him or point out the inconsistencies or the stupidity of his rant.
I am a ridiculous food snob. I love places with super fresh food and I have never minded the smaller portions. I care about what I eat, so I pay more for it and I don’t mind. But since I’ve been pregnant, I really can’t go to some of my favorite restaurants anymore. It’s just not enough food! I suspect that some people just won’t feel satisfied with the portion sizes of more “foodie” type restaurants. I’m not usually one of them but having recently left a restaurant after relatively expensive meal hungry and PISSED OFF about it certainly allows me to understand why people are turned off by the experience. I’ll be relieved when the volume of food I eat is no longer a consideration! Until then I’m kind of getting a kick out of experiencing gluttony. But I ate a lot better when I was less hungry.
Friends and I went out to a hoity toity restaurant to celebrate my friends’ remission from cancer. (Woohoo!)
We all ordered soup, with most ordering the tomato basil. The waiter came by and into my bowl he placed exactly 3 pine nuts topped with fresh basil. He performed this task with great relish.
After he left, I remember peering down into my bowl, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do. The rest of my friends were doing the same, giving each other a sidelong glance trying to figure out what the hell was the etiquette of eating pine nuts. Do you use a spoon? A fork?
Thankfully the waiter returned with tureens of soup, which he ladled on top of the nuts, putting us all out of our collective embarrassment about what to do with the 3 pine nuts topped with a sprinkling of fresh basil.
I must say it was deee-licious.
Pull an Abe Froman on them.
Can I add an extra gripe about ‘corkage’ charges?
A couple of weeks ago it was my kid’s birthday so we chortled off to a cheapo Vietnamese cafe in the inner-urban Little Saigon of Melbourne. (Victoria Street for those who know Melbourne).
There were nine of us at the table and we ordered extremely generously, but we also brought with us three bottles of plonk from the local pub instead of purchasing it from the restaurant itself…and even though we opened and poured the glasses ourselves, the joint charged us $18 for the privilege.
Corkage charges are a righteous rip-off, and are just another defacto ‘tip’ that the Australian diners are having to wear whether they like it or not.
Sucks,
I’ve only had one restaurant experience as bad as that, though thankfully nowhere near as expensive. It was a little Tex-Mex steakhouse where hubby and I ordered two appetizers and split the steak, and had two beers each, bringing the bill up to about $70, which was a lot for us at the time. I can’t complain about the beer, except for it being so overpriced, but the food was cold, there was barely any of it, and the steak was this miserly little thing buried under a mountain of onions and cilantro. We actually left and drove to the nearby burger place, because we were hungry.
You say that you bought the wine at the pub, instead of at the restaurant. Can i take this to mean that the restaurant actually has a wine list?
Also, do you know whether the $18 charge was based on a $2-per-person charge, or a $6-per-bottle charge? In my experience, corkage in Australia tends to be on a per-person basis, whereas in America it’s on a per-bottle basis.
If the restaurant itself has a wine list, then i really do understand charging corkage, and it’s something that’s done over here in the US as well. After all, while we might not like paying restaurant prices for wine, the fact is that wine makes up a reasonable percentage of many restaurants’ profit margin. If you bring in wine instead of buying from their list, you’re effectively depriving them of income, so there needs to be a way for them to get it back.
You say that you opened and poured the wine yourself. For me, this the most annoying part of the restaurant’s behavior, because part of what you’re paying for with corkage is the service associated with the wine. In the US, especially at decent restaurants, you pay corkage and the waiter or the sommelier will serve your wine to you as if it came from the restaurant’s wine list. Also, not only do you pay corkage in American restaurants, but because the corkage goes to the restaurant and not to the server, you’re also meant to tip the server based on the corkage itself. So, if you’re tipping 20%, and the corkage fee is $20, you need to add another $4 to the server’s tip.
Corkage is the subject of considerable debate and some acrimony, especially in areas where lots of customers like to take their own wine to restaurants. This article is a fascinating look at the policy of BYOB in northern California, especially the Bay Area and wine country. Many wine country restaurants, in particular, have no choice but to charge corkage, because so many customers want to bring their own wine.
Typical corkage charges in good restaurants seem to be about $15-30 a bottle, although this list of corkage fees at Orange County (Southern California) restaurants suggest that there are quite a lot of restaurants that charge less, and some that don’t charge at all.
Some restaurants have taken to adopting a sliding scale whereby the corkage goes up for each bottle. From the article in the first link:
(Can i just say that i think it’s great that the sommelier’s name is Emily Wines.)
Many restaurants also have a “one-for-one” policy, where they will waive corkage on one bottle for every bottle you buy from the wine list.
In some US states (i don’t have a list handy) bringing your own wine to a restaurant is actually against the law. One such state is Colorado, and some restauranteurs argue that banning BYOB actually benefits everyone. Because they’re not allowed to bring wine, patrons have no choice but to order from the restaurant’s wine list. And because they know that more people will order from their win list, restaurants can afford to reduce their mark-up.
That’s the argument made by some restauranteurs, anyway; i’m not sure whether it works quite that well in practice, and would be interested in seeing a price comparison between the wine lists of Colorado restaurants and wine lists in BYOB states. At least one Colorado owner, however, seems to follow a practice of reasonable mark-ups:
Again, as i suggested above, i’d be interested from hearing from Colorado diners about whether restaurant wine price and selection in the state really is as good as Stuckey suggests.
Did you request a manager, inform them that because their service sucked, the waiter was a jackass, and the food portions required you to go to another restaurant to get something to actually ease my hunger, you would be happy to pay and never return, after informing everyone you meet long and loud about exactly why the restaurant was not worth going to? And after you watched the manager’s face go bloodlessly white, realizing you were not worth discussing the issue with as it would waste about a thousand dollars worth of his time, did he comp me the meal so you would go away? Did you then leave a penny as a tip, and tell the waiter this was generous?
-FrL-