Of course not. Some places are simply over-priced, some to the extreme. NY used to be full of them, places basically living off past reputations. Most of those places have closed as the information flow from the web and multiple professional reviewing groups took their toll.

But, I dont think you can possibly get the same experience in terms of food and service that you get at some of the very, very best restaurants at a bargain. I think we were talking about this a bit on another thread. The old Alain Ducasse in NY had seats for 55 people. They had one seating per night. They had 50 full time employees. We heard Patricia Wells, food critic for the Herald Tribune in Paris, speak at a very small venue and talked to her afterwards. She was telling us how at Robuchons restaurant in Paris (Jamin, his old one) he had someone to use little scissors to trim the stems off the salad greens. That was most of what that person did for the day. Pierre Gagnaire used to fly mangos for dessert in from Tahiti, and I think they said they used to do it on the Concorde. Then there is something like serving perfectly ripe white peaches poached and drizzled with very old balsamic vinegar (I think 150 years) for a dessert in L'Arpege. It aint cheap to do stuff like that.