What did you eat last night for dinner?

[gomestar]

one can BYO at Per Se, no worries. But it's $90 a bottle. EMP is like $35.


I fully agree that wine is often about community.

 

[impolyt_one]

The three plates I ate at Tru;
Beet salad, osetra caviar, apple gelee (awkward to eat)

Langoustine, lobster mousse, saffron potatoes, bouillabaisse (also awkward to eat)

Rabbit, and I think stewed apple or something like that. just ok. Ugliest plate in existence. By this point in the dinner I was hoping the all the pointy **** was sharp so I could impale my face and get it over with.

Came back and had to eat some properly seasoned Japanese food to get back into the mode
Fava bean and dashi tofu, caviar, and whitebait to kick things off

layered pork and cabbage in clear soup, with spring vegetables

A little charred baby squid, scallops, some stringy sea vegetable, in a gloopy thickened sauce, kinda salty and tangy, some chopped yamaimo there in the white clump. This was actually kind of good and I don't really love any of the things that went into this dish

Sashimi four-piece

uni and more chopped yamaimo, I think a clump of chopped blanched fiddlehead under the uni as well

tiny bamboo shoots and cooked fresh seaweed, simple stuff. delicious.

tempura. scallop and a really tender piece of squid somewhere in there

fuki ice ice cream

ate dinner with my mother in law now long after that, couldn't eat much more but did, got a baller tomato and a bunch of grilled vegetables, a plate at a time

kitsune soba

 

[impolyt_one]

FWIW, Tru didn't taste that bad, and the food was properly salted. The only two places I was on about were Frontera Grill and Bouchon, which are like fancy Applebee's anyway. Nice to be back in Japan though, I gotta fast for a couple days to drop some weight that has crept up on me and then I am going to eat some more.

 

[fritzl]



Kyle is an advocate for wine justice.

his arguments are valid, imo.

 

[itsstillmatt]



his arguments are valid, imo.

I agree with them as well. Restaurant wine prices make my skin crawl for all of those reasons, and our (American) relationship to wine is highly problematic. I even like to think that I've influenced Kyle a bit along those lines.

 

[mgm9128]



Beet salad, osetra caviar, apple gelee (awkward to eat)

Robuchon for beginners.

 

[fritzl]



I agree with them as well. Restaurant wine prices make my skin crawl for all of those reasons, and our (American) relationship to wine is highly problematic. I even like to think that I've influenced Kyle a bit along those lines.

one of the bigger problems i see. you have to import a lot of the good stuff, which makes it more expensive. imo, that's a fact plus currency conversion.

i can have a nice bottle of simple white wine e.g. grüner veltliner, riesling, chardonnay for about € 20 - 25,- in a restaurant. wholesale price around € 6 - 8 and 8 - 10 in a shop.
same wine would be likely in the USD 50 - 70,- range on your winelist. same category of restaurant.

 

[itsstillmatt]



one of the bigger problems i see. you have to import a lot of the good stuff, which makes it more expensive. imo, that's a fact plus currency conversion.
i can have a nice bottle of simple white wine e.g. grüner veltliner, riesling, chardonnay for about € 20 - 25,- in a restaurant. wholesale price around € 6 - 8 and 8 - 10 in a shop.
same wine would be likely in the USD 50 - 70,- range on your winelist. same category of restaurant.

That may be part of it, but it isn't a major factor in my experience. The issues are more cultural. People don't go to expensive restaurants here and think it is really OK to drink on of the wines you mention. They not only have a poor understanding of price and value in wine, but they also have enormous anxiety about ordering from the lower priced bottles on the list. Many restaurants, knowing their profit centers, just don't buy these wines. But you can find them in stores, at prices not dissimilar from what you mention. That is just the high end restaurants, though. Mid and lower end are dealing with a whole other set of emotional baggage from the customers.

 

[fritzl]



That may be part of it, but it isn't a major factor in my experience. The issues are more cultural. People don't go to expensive restaurants here and think it is really OK to drink on of the wines you mention. They not only have a poor understanding of price and value in wine, but they also have enormous anxiety about ordering from the lower priced bottles on the list. Many restaurants, knowing their profit centers, just don't buy these wines. But you can find them in stores, at prices not dissimilar from what you mention. That is just the high end restaurants, though. Mid and lower end are dealing with a whole other set of emotional baggage from the customers.

sure. i was just giving, where the starting point is/can be. certainly, we have the label drinkers here, too. drinking expensive wine is a different prestige than food. food you probably can prepare yourself. you cannot make wine...

it's just annoying, when you're familiar with the prizes.

 

[edmorel]



That may be part of it, but it isn't a major factor in my experience. The issues are more cultural. People don't go to expensive restaurants here and think it is really OK to drink on of the wines you mention. They not only have a poor understanding of price and value in wine, but they also have enormous anxiety about ordering from the lower priced bottles on the list. Many restaurants, knowing their profit centers, just don't buy these wines. But you can find them in stores, at prices not dissimilar from what you mention. That is just the high end restaurants, though. Mid and lower end are dealing with a whole other set of emotional baggage from the customers.

my limited experience with the business clientle-centric midtown nyc restaurants is that it is quite uncommon for people to order wine for lunch and that typically the host of an (expense account) dinner will order wine based on a price range moreso than a producer/grape. If I had a nickle for every time I was at a table where the wine was ordered as such "we'd like a red in the $100-150 range". We did have a knowledgable wine guy in our group so whenever we went out with him, we typically scored some really good wine at good restaurants for "cheap" ($50-70).

 

[KJT]



Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

The three plates I ate at Tru;
Beet salad, osetra caviar, apple gelee (awkward to eat)

Langoustine, lobster mousse, saffron potatoes, bouillabaisse (also awkward to eat)

Rabbit, and I think stewed apple or something like that. just ok. Ugliest plate in existence. By this point in the dinner I was hoping the all the pointy **** was sharp so I could impale my face and get it over with.

Came back and had to eat some properly seasoned Japanese food to get back into the mode
Fava bean and dashi tofu, caviar, and whitebait to kick things off

layered pork and cabbage in clear soup, with spring vegetables

A little charred baby squid, scallops, some stringy sea vegetable, in a gloopy thickened sauce, kinda salty and tangy, some chopped yamaimo there in the white clump. This was actually kind of good and I don't really love any of the things that went into this dish

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

Sashimi four-piece

uni and more chopped yamaimo, I think a clump of chopped blanched fiddlehead under the uni as well

tiny bamboo shoots and cooked fresh seaweed, simple stuff. delicious.

tempura. scallop and a really tender piece of squid somewhere in there

fuki ice ice cream

ate dinner with my mother in law now long after that, couldn't eat much more but did, got a baller tomato and a bunch of grilled vegetables, a plate at a time

kitsune soba

It's interesting to me that you say that the dishes from Tru are awkward to eat , when the Japanese dishes, especially the baby squid one, look extremely awkward to eat to me as well. Did you eat that meal with chopsticks or fork and knife?

 

[mgm9128]

Scrambled eggs.

 

[shibbel]

Sous vide?

 

[mgm9128]



Sous vide?

Bain-marie.

 

[foodguy]

establishing a "fair" price for anything is tough for any business. i guess the fairest measure is when people stop paying it. personally, i'm the guy taking 10 minutes to scour a wine list searching for the best value. when i'm not eating at my house or other people's houses, where the wine is always better. but i have a hard time begrudging a small business owner doing what he needs to do to stay afloat.