86 The Tasting Menu?

It’s Time to Rethink the Fourhour $300 Meal (Wine Not Included)

- Jeff Gordinier

THE OTHER DAY, I sent a couple texts to help a friend of mine land a last-minute table at one of the best restaurants in New York. He thanked me. But moments later, he apologized. He was backing out. He just—well, he hadn’t been aware that a repast at this particular restaurant would involve the all-or-nothing proposition of a four-hour tasting menu, and he didn’t have the patience, the appetite, or the attention span to endure something like that. (The stratospheric price tag was not a problem.) He just wanted to sit down and order a dish or two without being schooled on which finishing school the carrots had gone to.

I was not surprised; I hear it all the time. Expensive marathon tasting menus have become the bloated rock operas of the culinary realm. Both diners and chefs (even some of the chefs who serve tasting menus) have described them to me with the kinds of eye rolls and heaving sighs that are usually reserved for wrist-slitting holiday dinners with relatives who still cling to the belief that Barack Obama is a gay Muslim.