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On my very first visit to a new client’s seaside property I got the
grand tour from the Executive Chef. As we tromped across plush carpet
into the all-day oceanview café, we passed huge armchairs at oversized
tables under a mass of crystal chandelier. I turned calmly to my
jovial, rotund host and said “I feel that I am about to be
overcharged.”
No matter what the indicators say, the price of upscale eat and drink
has been steadily climbing. I’m not talking about soda and Snackwells,
I’m talking about the kind of foie gras fine dining being enjoyed by
everyone from mid-western matrons to Nevada high rollers, from Bay
Area foodies to Seattle cyber-geeks. While the taste for good tastes
has exploded all across America that pesky relationship between price
and value has begun to fray.
Because when it come to culinary consumption it’s not futures we
consider, it’s the value of right now’s quaff and crunch. That’s why a
perfect hot, (not scalding ), espresso with chocolatey hints and
luscious foamy crema afloat is well worth that $3.50. But a tepid,
wattery, paper eyecup of acrid bean brew is cause for depression,
divorce or worse. It’s also why when the meal is superior, the
service invisibly sublime, the room spectacular, the conversation
sterling and even the people at the next table seem special and cute,
the bill is hardly reviewed. It’s never just price, but also product
and place. Sometimes, and especially above a certain price point,
it’s just now at a precarious balance.
On the flip side, too cheap is scary too. Once upon a counter I
attempted to retail a wheel of fine italian fontal. Couldn’t give it
away, until I fashioned a sign that read “Just arrived. Only 22lbs.
left. $8.50 per lb.” It fairly flew out the door, and worth every
penny. We used to call it the Gucci Factor, or value by association
to price.
Some years later, just prior to the current restaurant boom, I was in
Las Vegas, lazing by a spectacular water feature aside an edificial
replication (ok, lying by the pool at the pyramid) when a barely clad
cutie offered to deliver libation. Feeling tropical I went for rum
and Coke. The tab said $2.18! “I don’t wish to imbibe at that price”
I bellowed, without a shred of gallantry (and in a fairly small
Speedo). “What rot-gut rum is this?” Needless to say, things were
soon to change.
In every instance, from a $30 truffle soup to the blue plate special,
from a $6,000 Bordeaux to a pound of take-out potato salad, edibles
especially need to pass the straight face test. Can the waiter offer
it without a smirk? Do you dispose of the reciept before your wife
goes through your pockets? Can it go on the expence account? Do you
just need to say “the heck with it” before diving in? Can you say
that price out loud?
In the perilous later middle 80’s, a Manhattan hot spot happily
charged $32.50 for a pleasant plate of crisply roasted chicken and
fairly delicious french fries. Come the crash, that platter suddenly
sold for under twenty bucks. People were livid, and the place soon
closed. Folks complained of feeling had, while the owner whined,
“but they’d never pay the old price now.” Right on both counts, Bub.
So, in this era of oenophilic
expansiveness and gustatory acrobatics, it’s not just the buyer, but
also the seller who must beware. What you charge, or pay, should
have some real relation to what things cost, what they’re worth, and
how we’ll all feel about it when we wake up in the morning of the next
millennium. |
