What do we expect when we pay for a meal?

I recently ate a wonderful dinner with two friends at Gordon Ramsay at the London Hotel and while all of the food was very good, I left the restaurant feeling unsatisfied. I spent the next couple of days thinking about this dinner, trying to remember the taste and texture of each dish, figuring out how to describe the meal, and generally trying to give it a place among previous New York dinners. Despite the fact that there were no problems or shortcomings with the food or service, I couldn’t bring myself to rank the overall experience very highly (no offense to the people I dined with). If the food was good, the service was good and the company was good, how could the overall experience not be fantastic? Well, for the price of the dinner, $280 dollars a person for the menu ‘prestige’ with wine pairing, as well as a pre dinner cocktail, a glass of champagne from the champagne trolley (hard to resist when they roll it up and ask not whether we want a glass of champagne but what kind) coffee and bon bons from the bon bon trolley, a bottle of non-Bloomberg water, tax and tip, I expected more.

To compare, I ate a perfectly nice meal at Aquagrill this past week that included a dozen oysters, two appetizers, three entrees, three desserts, and a bottle and glass of wine (I drank a little more than my two dinner companions) for $270 dollars total. Was my dinner at Gordon Ramsay better than my dinner at Aquagrill? It certainly was. Was it $190 dollars (per person) better than my dinner at Aquagrill? It definitely wasn’t.

In a city where the cost of dining out is constantly rising and restaurants increasingly sell not only a great meal but the ‘experience’ of dining out how can someone with a limited budget assess whether a dining experience on a particular night is worth the price they pay for it?

I suppose the price of a meal really comes from what the individual diner gets out of the experience. Its one thing to spend a lot of money to go to a very nice restaurant for a special occasion and expect the food to be good, but its entirely different to go to a very expensive restaurant to simply eat and hopefully really enjoy oneself. I suppose some people go to Gordon Ramsay simply to show others that they can spend a lot of money like the group sitting behind us that said the word “billions” very loudly at every opportunity behind us, or the couple where the woman told the waiter that she was delighted with the food because she though British restaurants “only served beef Wellington.” I am not one of those people and I think that is why I was disappointed. While the food at Gordon Ramsay was good, it wasn’t transcendently good, and didn’t push any boundaries or make me think or appreciate food in a different way. Two of the three of us at our table were even considerably annoyed that despite are vocalized interest and curiosity about the food, the couple next to us was offered a tour of the kitchen and we weren’t (maybe it was the fact that we were three 23 year old guys).

I’m not one to shy away from a restaurant because of an anticipated large bill, but I do think that when the check reaches a certain amount the expectations of a night out at a restaurant certainly go up. Different people value different parts of a restaurant experience, but for my money, I felt that despite the tasty (but not amazing) food, good service and good company at Gordon Ramsay, I left feeling somewhat empty.