Actually $95 per bottle corkage is never a relative bargain. When you pay $800 for food, you’re acknowledging that you’re buying the best quality food prepared by some of the best chefs in the world. That’s the reason the price is so high. When you pay $95 corkage, you’re not getting $95 per bottle’s worth of wine service, and you brought the wine, so you’re the one that determined the quality of the product consumed.
It’s robbery, and the reason they charge so much is because they have your ass in the seat shelling out $800 for food. It’s just a filthy and extremely high tax used to deter folks from bringing in wine.
I disagree. If the food costs 10 times what a “normal” meal costs, but the corkage is only 5 times “normal” corkage, isn’t that a relative bargain?
Of course, you might think a $20 corkage fee at an ordinary restaurant is ridiculous – so cannot be used to compute a relative bargain – in which case we’d have to agree to disagree.
It’s still not a relative bargain because (1) there is no bargain, and (2) the food isn’t apples to apples while the wine services probably is. First, there is no “bargain” to relate to when you’re paying $95 to bring in a bottle of wine, have it opened if it’s not already opened, and then have it poured into a glass…something you could easily do by yourself, and something that’s not remotely difficult to do. There are dozens of restaurants with commensurate wine service at a mere fraction of the corkage. So, there simply isn’t a bargain. I get the argument that it’s cheaper to bring your own then to get angry-banged by the wine list markups, but again, the use of the term “bargain” throws me off. You’re paying a higher tax than anywhere for the same service, but because the markups are so high, it’s a better option. That’s not a “bargain,” so much as a better choice.
Comparing it to the food costs, you’ve lost me. If you’re talking about bargains, you can’t compare insanely good to normal, and then see if the price is legitimate. It’s like saying overpaying by $75 for a shirt that is nearly the same as another shirt is a better bargain than buying a Porsche instead of a Sentra. If you’ve paid the normal price for the Sentra and the Porsche, there is no difference in the bargain you’ve received.
Masa is considered one of the best sushi places in the world, so comparing your “bargain” at $800 to a normal meal for a tenth the price is illogical. In fact, 10X more for the best sushi in the world (arguably) relative to a normal sushi dinner in Dallas seems like a better bargain than paying 2-3x more for wine service that is no different than what I’d get at a nice place on Vegas, which has the highest concentrations of MWs in the world, or did a few years back.
I don’t mind paying $20 for corkage because that’s a normal and reasonable tax. It’s the normal price of the shirt.
Paying $95 corkage is a bargain compared with, for example, paying a $400 markup on the wine list. So while it might not be an actual bargain it is a relative bargain in the context of wine options at the restaurant.
While it may or may not be a bargain, sometimes it is worth it to drink the wines that you want together with the food that you want at the restaurant in which you want to drink and eat them.
I can drink any wine I want at home for $0 corkage (out of Zalto stems, even), but it would cost a hell of a lot more than that extra $95 to get Masa to come over to my place and serve me sushi! So if I want to enjoy my wines with his food, it still seems like my best bet is to go to the restaurant. The fact that I can go to Grand Sichuan and drink my wine for free doesn’t really have any relevance here.
Also, their wine selection is poor and absurdly priced. Consider the 2009 Bilaud Simon Chablis Grand Cru “Les Preuses”. That’s $285 off their list. That wine retails for about $60 or $70. I could, say, spend $200 on a Raveneau “Valmur”, pay the corkage, and have a much better wine experience for approximately the same price.
I don’t disagree, Mark or Ross, that the best choice is to bring your own wine. I just hate rationalizing the absurd corkage fee as a “bargain.” I think it’s highway robbery, even if it is the better choice. It’s a lesser of two evils, but certainly not a bargain.
Restaurants aren’t exactly making money hand-over-fist, even (or perhaps especially) at the high end. Masa has 26 seats, and they generally book a single cover at dinner. Even at $450 for the food (what the restaurant is getting, the rest goes to tax and tip) it just isn’t that much revenue. When you throw in the number of staff in front and back of house, the prime-NYC real estate, and the exceedingly expensive fresh seafood ovetnighted from Tokyo, there isn’t much profit left on the food. So, given that they hope to make a couple hundred bucks in beverage margin on each seat, $95 corkage isn’t exactly “highway robbery” or “absurd”.
Now, if I see the chef driving around in a Ferrari convertible with a 30L ace of spades in the passenger seat, I might change my mind! As it is, these folks make a very modest income given the fact that they are at the absolute top of their game.
Yet as far as I can see, not one person has called it “a bargain,” but rather " a relative bargain." As in relation to the other choices. Or the better choice (or the lesser of two evils).
