I did eat at Masa, a number of years ago. It was, by a fair margin, the most expensive meal I’ve ever eaten. (The Ōmi beef was accepted as a supplement for two, though it was “only” $100/pp back then.) I entered with Levi’s beverage recs (he was no longer there) and drank those. There’s no possible objective measure by which I could tell you that it was “worth it” or not. I’ve had better meals, but some of them cost close to as much and others cost $20 for two. That said, it’s not a meal I’ll ever forget, and it was amazing, especially as someone who never made it to Japan. (My ex also forgot to turn her cell phone off, which was one of the things Levi stridently warned us against, and it rang during service at the sushi bar.)
But I think about, say, Zahav here in Philly. The tasting menu’s $72. A truly great meal. For that you get the entire kitchen staff and their accumulated work, the room, and the waitstaff. (Yes, you have to add a gratuity and some tax, but that’s also true of what follows.) The wine I most want to drink on their list is $225. The reliable and affordable wine, that will go with most of what they serve, is $80. Again, I’ll have to pay gratuity and tax on those.
I’d rather have the meal. I can buy Iuli anytime, and I can buy old Musar for far cheaper than that. Yes, PA pricing, but still…
In other words, I agree with the original contention…to a point. The potential for a great meal to reorganize my mind is achievable at a much lower price than the same experience with a beverage.
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Errrrh? I’d rather have a 200+$ wine with a 200$ diner than a 15$ wine with a 15$ diner… in a restaurant.
If at home, I prefer everyday to cook a meal costing 15$ a head and opening a 10$ ++ bottle of wine…
I am in the process of putting together a BYO lunch, where people are digging deep into their cellars to bring something special. In order to allow the wines to sing, the chef is under some fairly severe constraints, no vinegar apart from the Champagne opening, lemon peel rather than juice, no sugar etc. He is still putting together an incredible menu, but if he were cooking from his standard menu, most of the dishes would clash with the wines.
My original post was more about the relative value of wine and food. I never quite understood drinking DRC at restaurants. Most of the experience is from chefs embellishing the ingredients, which is usually not particularly wine friendly.
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I was buying some pork rib caps from Flannery for $25, a seriously delicious bite, but kind of expensive for pork. I realized how much easier it is to buy costly ingredients when I am spending so much on wine.
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~$50 dinner (~$100 for 2). ~$50 - 100 bottle of wine.
Not cutting many corners and I get out for $200 for 2 people, for a truly luxurious dinner and very good bottle. 20% tip included. I do it all the time.
Oh, I don’t happen to live in NYC any more, but I’m 30 miles from Food and Wine’s restaurant city of the year from ~5 years back. Lucky me!
Dan Kravitz
Hard to find a similarly good wine at the same price as your incredible local lobsters.
Great perspective. I think the culprit is the durability of wine. Wine can be hoarded. But the reason prices have drifted apart even more so recently has to do with the reach of information because of new technology. The demand for many wines is still today confined to the limited number of people who know the wine exists. Take Chiara Condello for example. Even on a forum like this, very few probably know of her wines. If they did, I would bet the prices would be much higher. The number of users on chess apps skyrocketed after the Netflix show The Queens Gambit came out.
This all sort of compounds with the fact that wine has recently appreciated greatly, so now due to speculation the demand has increased beyond those who simply wanted to drink it to those who want to invest in it. It is almost like the “going viral” effect and that is why “investment grade” wine has been the wine that appreciated the most.
Fascinating thread. I am a 75 year old retired James Beard panelist who travelled heavily in Europe for my primary business for 35+ years. The result is that I have eaten at more than 100 Michelin starred restaurants including 14 three stars in Europe. I literally built business trips (for my industry) around getting future reservations at El Bulli, Schwarzwaldstube, El Raco de Can Fabes and others. Jean Louis, The French Laundry and expeditions into the Quebec outback factor into this.
Then there are waiting lists for mailing lists: Cayuse (12 years for Bionic Frog) is the lead, begging for individual bottles (‘85 Groth Reserve was Parker’s first 100 point American wine) and opening a 2000 Lafite at it’s financial peak: $2,000+.
Today, as I type this outside of Washington, D. C. I would no longer consider flying across the Atlantic for dinner. Rather, I would drive to IAD, fly to LAX, rent a car and drive a few miles north to In-n-Out for a double double Animal style with fries to match.
I once wrote about this on Chowhound: “The 5,000 mile hamburger” which I was told had more than a million hits. Today, it would be a 4 x 4 with extra spread and grilled onions.
I should also mention a meal at Dal Pescatore sometime in the early 2000’s. Esquire had just built a feature story around it as “the best restaurant in the world” written by John Mariani. I drove up from Bologna and left the window of my rental car open several inches on a hot summer day. When I returned three hours later the driver’s seat was covered by chicken feathers.
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Aaron Judge just hit a home run in Cleveland. I have an opinion on where he should have a meal after the game.
