Friday, January 12, 2007

High on the hog

You know that disgust you feel when you're going through a random pile of stuff and find an olf gift card that is probably expired and you just wasted a present from someone? Well, I had that feeling last weekend when we found an restaurant gift card that someone had given us back in 2004. It said that it was good for two years, but that only brought it to July 2006. I called them and they said that I could use it, but if I made reservations right then. Well, since the gift card was for $100, I thought Margaret and I were going to completely pig out. Little did we know that it was probably one of the most expensive restaurants in town. We took one look at the menu and realized that the $100 wasn't going to go very far. A 24 oz. New York steak cost $85--and that didn't include a salad or anything on the side... just the meat! A baked potato cost $8, as did a house salad. We were looking at the wine menu and some of the bottles were $800 each! They did try to class it up to make you feel like you were getting your money's worth by preparing stuff at the table for you. I couldn't believe the swarm of FIVE servers preparing the potatoes of the people sitting next to us. They carefully sliced open the potato, got the butter and cream layered just so, and topped it off with a sprinkling of pepper. Oh! THAT'S why they charge $8 for it... it's all in the labor.

Margaret ordered a baseball cut steak and lobster medallions, having no idea what a baseball cut steak was. I ordered a flaming lamb sword. When our dinners came, we instantly realized why they call it a baseball cut--the steak was as thick as it was round. I don't think she was even able to eat a third of it. My flaming lamb sword was just that--they brought out a skewer with the lamb on it and poured some inflammable liquid over it to make it burn bright blue... INCHES from my face. It WAS impressive. Both of us were so full after eating less than half of all that meat that we ended up getting doggie bags. After cleaning our plates and giving us our dessert menus, they set out some fruit, nuts, a nutcracker, a big slice of roquefort cheese, crackers, and dates... you know, just to tide us over until we got our dessert. Man! How much food do the rich need to eat?!? Evidently more than we do.

All in all it was an interesting, decadent experience. Made doubly surreal by the fact that I had a $1.58 lunch at Taco Bell earlier in the day.

The experience reminded me of a story my aunt told me about talking with someone in her ward whose daughter was serving a mission in Los Angeles. She was serving in the Beverly Hills area and there, instead of inviting the missionaries over to dinner, they would just get taken out to eat by the members. Being that it was Beverly Hills, the daughter got taken to quite fancy restaurants, where she would regularly have meals costing upwards of $100. My cousin, listening in on the conversation, remarked, "$100! She must be a real PIG!" In Idaho, the only way to have a $100 meal is to offer to pay for your whole extended family and all your neighbors when you go down to the annual VFW pancake feed.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let me guess: Ruth's Chris?

Jeremy said...

No, El Gaucho. You can see their menu here

Anonymous said...

Conveniently, the Gentleman's Room provides an alternative to washing dishes if you can't afford your dinner after choosing the wrong bottle of wine. Perhaps that's why it's site lists rave reviews from both Zagat and Playboy.