My wife and I enjoyed an incredible dinner at Per Se a few weeks back for a special occasion. The final bill was over $1,000 - the most I've ever paid for a meal. It was certainly worth the splurge. We're going to start saving up again for our next NYC visit.

Hey, enquiring minds want to hear what was on the menu.

And on your plates.

My better half saved the card - let me see if I can find it....

Did they give you a menu card? I love it when restaurants do that. We recently tried the tasting menu at Steirereck in Vienna and each course came with a little descriptive card. I think more restaurants should do that (they had them in German & English)

Pierre Gagnaire didn't have cards, but they kindly gave us a translated menu to take home.


One day when I have time, I'll post both menus since those were definitely 2 meals in our all-time top 5.

please explain what could possibly make a meal for two worth $1,000? I just don't get it.

I'll stick to the 99 cent menu at wendys, best burger ever.

1. Bragging rights here on FT.

2. Bragging rights to your grandchildren.
<or>
3. Showing your grandchildren where their inheritance is being spent.

4. Doing something that very few people have either the opportunity, desire, ability or "guts" to do.

5. Doing something you'll never, ever forget.

We all spend way more, in life, than $1,000 on things a lot more boring and forgettable than a truly memorable and unique dinner.


Just a few thoughts that come immediately to mind.

Did you find any of these on IDINE RewardNetwork?

HAHAHA.

Please dont take this the wrong way, but your taste in burgers (a food that I love by the way) has a lot of room for improvement. ;)

Every time my wife and I go, or especially if we take a friend as well, to dinner at a place like Ducasse, Jean George, Gagnaire or L'Arpege I try to remember to point out that we are spending a very small part of our non-existent childs non-existent Harvard education on the meal. ;)

Ahem...;)

^ ^

Indeed, as you know, as far as the fast food chain variety of burger it is a tie in my mind between the Mosburger spicy cheeseburger (with fries and an iced green tea :) ) and an In and Out burger. Wendys isnt in that game. When you up the ante to the Burger Joint at the Parker Meridian or for that matter even Corner Bistro or Fanellis, you are in a different universe than Wendys. :)

Or, in the category of 'junk food', Gray's Papayas (although, of course, that's dogs rather than burgers).

I love mosburger too (the burger, not the FT-er; no offence ;-)

You forgot that it is really fun and if you chose correctly the food is magnificent.

Love the Grays "Recession special" which they have had on the menu for as long as I can remember. I think it is $2.39 for two dogs and a papaya juice (any juice but orange in fact ;) ). ^

No kidding. :confused:

Then are there any great restaurants in low rent towns?

Anyone want to try the best French restaurant in Bloomington, Indiana? :D

Actually are quite a few IMO. And they're fun to find.

Some of the best French restaurants I've ever been to are Le Francais in Wheeling, IL, which is a city well north of Chicago.

And Cafe Johnell in Fort Wayne, IN as well as Cafe Central in El Paso, TX.

Not the traditional places you'd expect to find first-class French restaurants.

So highest price does not mean highest quality nor most enjoyable meal.

Wasn't per se always prix fixe? That's how French Laundry has always been. 7 or 9 courses, with some options and supplements for particulars ones of those. I just looked and it seems the 9 course Chef's menu is now $240 (including the vegetable one, which used to be cheaper). Those have gone up a lot in the past couple of years. I think when he opened Per Se it had the same setup.

Mmm, Grays Papaya . . . .

Most often you'd be correct.

It's like buying a bottle of wine. A $100 bottle is rarely if ever five times better than a $20 bottle. But a $20 bottle can be much better than a $100 bottle.

Same holds true for a restaurant. It's not necessarily the price that dictates the quality. But at a certain price level....and we're getting back to the $1,000 a couple dinner discussed earlier....you would certainly have every reason to believe that meal would be world-class and infinitely memorable.

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.

Works for me also. Why am I even looking at this ?

More to the point some of these restaurants serve maybe 10% of the food that they provision. The rest is throw away. They do this to get the "very best" of the best. Making that peach cost $20, to pay for the 10 others that were bought and not used.

I once ate at a restaurant in Paris and had an animated discussion with my dinner companion. The restaurant delayed desert during this, and I was astonished to have it arrive the instant that we were ready. What timing! Later I learned they had made it 4 times -- and it was ready to eat 4 times -- until they saw we were ready to eat it. So it cost 4 deserts to make 1. This is just the standard service at these places (Lucas Carton in this case). Astonishing. But worth it.

my supplier spent $900 USD at the Morton's in HKG for 5 peoople and 2-3 bottles of wine when he took us to dinner....

Should have gone across the street to either Pen or IC, get a much nicer dinner at either one for that kind of money in HKG (which is great value for fine dining).

Let's just say I don't agree with your classification of Le Francais in Wheeling as "first class" if that same standard makes Le Bernardin "first class."

in it's prime, I don't think there ever would have been an argument that Le Francais was first class. But it went through an ownership change several years ago and seemed to have quickly deteriorated.

This, however, from a recent blurb, on the restaurant. The chef that brought them to the party is now back in charge:

Chef Roland Liccioni is back ~ taking over the reign as chef / partner of Le Francais restaurant in Wheeling. The highly imaginative and artistic chef was previously at the restaurant from 1989 – 1999. During this time, Chef Roland achieved a five-star Mobil rating, five Diamond awards, accolades from Food & Wine Magazine, and in 1997, he won the James Beard Best Chef in the Midwest Award, a highly sought after honor. Under his direction, Le Francais was thought of as one of, if not the, best Restaurant in the United States. Chef Roland’s achievements literally put Chicago on the map of the culinary world.

In my opinion, taste is all about appetite.

My best meal ever?

One saltine cracker. (I was lost in the wilderness and had not eaten in 2 days)
I will never forget the taste of it. ever.

Cholula and obscure2K

I thought about you (my fellow Harry's lovers) when I ran across this quote
from one of my favorite Venice writers-- Jan Morris:

"Homage, whatever the trendies say, to Harry’s Bar, my local for half a century, where we once ate so delicious a dinner of scampi, salad, white wine and zabaglione that when we finished we had it all over again"


I just made reservations wayy in advance at Locanda Cipriani and have Venice on my mind.

Very cool!!

And buon appetito. :)

Well, what a high compliment, damon88 :)
You will absolutely adore the Locanda. Please feel free to PM me prior to your trip.

Le Francais used to sell superb hand made chocolates.I hope they resume this practice.It was the best afte La Maison Du Chocolate that I have ever had.

My boss just had a meal at Joel Reblchon in Las Vegas.
The setting and service were suberb.But at $500 a head the actual food served was laughable-exquisitely plated and of the highest quality but the prtions were so miniscule that you never really got enough food to get the full effect.

Definately more worthy than Black Angus for me.

The times I've had the 16 course at Robuchon I thought I was going to explode. Did your boss order the smaller tasting menu? Or does s/he simply ave an enormous appetite?