The most I ever paid for a dinner for two was about $220, at the Driskill Hotel here in Austin.
We can’t afford to eat at places like that more than once a decade or so, but it was an excellent meal.
I don’t drink at all, mind you- if I did, presumably the bill would have been a lot higher.
Well, we did end up having steak – ribeye for me, filet minion for the wife – and it all came to 3761.54 baht. That’s about US$120. So we broke the $100 barrier with that. Even without the after-dinner liqueur – and alcohol is taxed highly in Thailand, making it relatively expensive at all times – it would have gone over that. That’s much more than for our anniversary meal a couple of months ago, which was at our favorite Italian-pizza place. Steak is pricy here, and it’s probably the first time we both went for it at the same time. Normally a big meal at a Western-food place will run us no more than $80 and usually much less.
I think we must have broken the $100 barrier too with some early Thanksgiving meals. Nowadays there’s a slew of buffets and other specials for Thanksgiving, and you can stuff your selves silly for $20 or $30 apiece. But a long time ago, only a handful of very expensive restaurants would do up Thanksgiving for us Yanks, and they charged accordingly. Also, inflation has been taking a toll on all prices over here lately. But I think Sunday’s $120 tariff is close to the maximum we’ve paid if not the highest.
We’ll only pay these prices for Western food too. There is absolutely no way the wife is going to put up with paying big money for Thai food. Not when she can go pick up something just as good in the market for a buck or two. There are many “fine dining” options for Thai food in Bangkok, but we’ve never tried those, not once.
$254. My then girlfriend’s birthday in 1998. Rivièra in Atlanta. 1.2 carat diamond solitaire necklace ($3200) was the gift. She was apoplectic, because unknown to me, I was recklessly spending OUR money. I didn’t get around to proposing until about six months later.
The tech business was good to us in the late 1990s. Nowadays we are old farts and $75 is a big night out. We’ve given up both meat and alcohol in the intervening 15 years, so eating out fancy is just not as easy now.
Back in the same era, I would expense business dinners of spectacular amounts. I remember $2000+ on many occasions in NYC. But that was usually four people and not my money.
Probably around $50 at Outback. But I’ve spent more than $80 just on myself at Capitol Grille.
That is us, too. Although we do have satellite TV. We’d rather travel than get a new car. 
I was showing mrAru the thread [he wants to go for the American burgers in Berlin next time we are there] and looked at the tasting menu for Alinea, and thanks to my allergies and sensitivities about a third of the items were not able to be eaten by me. I got to wondering how much they would charge for a custom tasting menu - give them all my allergies and sensitivities, and my few food dislikes and see what they could come up with for us.
AFAIK, they are very accommodating when it comes to food allergies and dietary restrictions. Don’t know what they do about “food dislikes,” but from what I can tell, they’ll even customize a vegan menu for you, so I assume they can work around any food aversions.
I am a supertaster, frex swordfish has a machine oil undertaste to the flesh, even when fresh fished half an hour previously and cooked properly [the benefits of dating a guy who liked sport fishing and had the money for us to go on some seriously nicely equipped head boats!] and eggplant has a bitter oily taste. I can eat both of them, but I would rather spend my money on something I like the taste of.
Not spent much time playing with molecular cuisine yet, but there are some things I would like to do like encapsulate mojito into pearls for with lamb, and use dashi to make ‘caviar’ pearls - and play with some liquid nitrogen, and make foams with my whip-it whipped cream maker. The sous vide is fun to play with. I would like to try Alinea sometime, but the money isn’t around right now.
$350 at The Blue Heron at the Lake of the Ozarks. It was our 4th wedding anniversary and 10 years after we met. The food was fantastic, the atmosphere was great, the service top notch. But it wouldn’t have been near that much if my husband hadn’t ordered the 35yo scotch at $70 per drink. He had three. 
We set a new record last night. Saturday was our anniversary, and we had dinner at Roy’s here in Waikiki. Roy’s is a very big deal in Hawaii. We paid $244.19 including drinks and tip. It was indeed a fantastic meal.
Wow,OH WOW,at some of those totals.
My big number is $75.
This was 15 years ago, red lobster, wife had lobster,I had a combo platter and a few drinks.
Usually a big night out for us is $35 at the buffet.
Me? I can never justify paying for a dinner that will cost me an AIRFARE to where I can eat delicious, fresh food at a 20/th or less of the price of my hometown.
And I’m on an island continent, so any airfare from here is expensive. Be damned if I’m going to indulge in one single meal that will cost more than a flight to somewhere else.
The most expensive meal I’ve had was free. The meal was free; getting there and back cost £200. Of course, it was part of an event and I met lots of interesting people. I’ll probably be spending £100+ on my share of a meal at the Kennels at Goodwood next week.
Houston, during August each year, does “Restaurant Week”. It actually has pretty much morphed into the entire month. Restaurants put together a three or four course fixed menu and the proceeds all go to the Houston Food Bank.
A couple of years ago, SWMBO and I went to one of the really high-end restaurants and had dinner. Three course fixed menu, drinks and add-ons extra. She had a couple of glasses of wine and we went up on dessert. Total was about a hundred bucks. That same dinner on their regular menu would have been nearly three hundred bucks.
Le Train Bleu has the reputation to be one of the most beautiful restaurants in Paris, but not necessarily one of the very best. I intend to eat there one of these days. Also, you can eat there for much cheaper than you did (around € 200 for two would be my guess).
To answer the OP question, I guess (not sure) that the most I paid in a restaurant might have been € 250 for two, and € 150 for one. I like food (even though I don’t rise to the level of a foodie) and tend to eat in intermediary price range restaurants. Typically, the meal is worth for me what I paid (saying that because a lot of posters stated the contrary), with of course huge variations. The meal I enjoyed the most during the recent years costs €98 (just checked their website, that’s without wine but I don’t like wine much) , the meal I enjoyed the most during the recent months costed me € 28.
I meant not necessarily one of the very best for the food itself.
Around $200 at a Brazilian steakhouse including drinks. Some of the best steak I’ve had that I didn’t prepare myself.
Good grief! I can’t even fathom paying those kinds of prices for restaurant food. Of course, the fancy stuff generally doesn’t appeal to my taste buds, either, but for $300, you’d better end up shitting gold afterward!
I think ~$50 was the most I spent for dinner for two, and that included sodas, appetizers, and desserts, and I thought THAT was expensive.
I asked this question to my gf (a real foodie, this time). Her answer was € 850 for two (she also loves wine, so I guess there were quite a lot of it included). And, according to her, “worth every penny”.
She also mentioned that the costlier dish she ate costed € 120 (risotto come un cacciucco/fish soup risotto), also worth every penny.
For the record, € 850 is more than half her monthly income. A real foodie, I tell you.
Around $200 (actually for three–our teenage son accompanied us) a few years ago at Farallon in SF. You could make the argument that you’re paying for the decor, which is dazzling of course, but I thought the seafood was just fantastic, certainly well worth it.