THE BAD DEAL

Would you spend $250 on a VIP ticket to eat & drink outdoors at the GoogaMooga food festival in Brooklyn? Actually, you’ll spend $267 “after fees.” Or would you rather eat in any of these restaurants below, for about the same amount of money or less. Where there’s air-conditioning. And service. And sommeliers. And comfortable places to sit. 

Note: GoogaMooga’s VIP pass includes beverages; the restaurants below do not. In most cases, you should be able to add on a few glasses of wine and stay under $250 or $300 at the most.

GoogaMooga, the Brooklyn food festival that’s terrorizing Twitter and at least one prominent New York Times critic this weekend, gave away all of its 40,000 free tickets for entry, so the only remaining option for admission is a $250 all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink pass. Yeah, it’s a BAD DEAL. Here’s why: 

Those with free tickets will pay $6-$8 for “tastes” and $9-$12 for “full plates” of food by chefs like David Chang and Seamus Mullen. So assuming you get the most expensive items, you’ll have to order about ten full plates just to justify $125 worth of your $250 ticket. Think you’re really gonna eat that much? And then you’ll have to drink an extra $125 worth of beer and wine. Outdoors. In a Park. 

And since one of our colleagues reported a 45 minute wait for an “umami burger,” we reckon you’ll be standing in line for a VERY LONG time to use up all those dining dollars. Or let’s make things even simpler: When was the last time you spent $250 at The Feast of San Genaro, or any other outdoor street fair with food and music? Never. 

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GoogaMooga, the food festival that will draw over 40,000 visitors to Brooklyn’s Prospect Park this weekend, is turning New York’s best chefs into cash-only vendors. Apparently this remote corner of King’s Country, along with tribal areas of Papau New Guinea, haven’t yet joined the civilized world in accepting credit cards. Square mobile payments make this all quite easy, which is why you were able to use plastic at the Frieze fair on Randall’s Island. But not GoogaMooga.

Would you walk around a crowd of 40,000 with wads of cash in your pocket? Didn’t think so. Too bad the only cashless option is a pass that will cost you $250 per person, per day. Sure, a whole bunch of great chefs serving great food in Brooklyn sounds like a great time, but sorry, cash-only events are most assuredly, most definitely a BAD DEAL.

1. The Food of Spain: 5.5 lbs
2. Authentic Mexican (Bayless): 2.3 lbs
3. Letters to a Young Chef (Boulud): 0.35 lbs
4. Hero Food: Seamus Mullen: 3.3 lbs
5. Momofuku: 2.8 lbs
6. Momofuku Milk Bar: 2.4 lbs
7. Volt Ink: 4.5 lbs
8. A Girl and Her Pig (Bloomfield): 2.4 lbs
9. Eleven Madison Park: 6 lbs
10. American Flavor (Carmellini): 3 lbs
11. Mozza Cookbook:3 lbs
12. Next 1906: 0 lbs
13. PDT: 1.9 lbs
14. Eat With Your Hands (Pelaccio): 3 lbs
15. Silver Palate Cookbook: 2.4 lbs
16. The Professional Chef (CIA): 7.4 lbs
17. Mastering the Art of French Cooking (I): 3.2 lbs
18. Mastering the Art of French Cooking (II): 2.2 lbs
19. Four Fish (Greenberg): 0.55 lbs
20. The Sushi Economy: 1.2 lbs
21. How Italian Food Conquered the World: 1.4 lbs 
22. Fork it Over (Richman): 0.5 lbs
23. Imbibe (Wondrich): 1.0 lbs
24. The Craft of the Cocktail (DeGroff): 2.1 lbs
25. Blood, Bones & Butter: 0.7 lbs
26. Omnivore’s Dilemma (That Guy): 1.0 lbs

Total Weight Saved: 64.1 lbs

Each digital cookbook you download doesn’t add a single ounce to your iPad, which can hold all of the above volumes for 1.44 lbs. That’s a GOOD DEAL. The physical tomes would weigh 64.1 lbs altogether. Try putting that in your carry-on. And all the jet fuel saved on shipping is an even BETTER DEAL. 

1. Modernist Cuisine: 51.3 lbs 
2. The French Laundry (Keller):5 lbs
3. Under Pressure (Keller): 4.4 lbs
4. Ad Hoc (Keller): 5.4 lbs
5. Bouchon (Keller): 5.3 lbs
6. Alinea: 6.6 lbs
7. Noma: 4.8 lbs
8. On The Line (Ripert):2.6 lbs
9. Fat Duck Cookbook: 5.6 lbs
10. Mugaritz: A Natural Science of Cooking: 2.2 lbs
11. El Bulli 1994-1997: 8.8 lbs
12. El Bulli 1998-2002: 10.2 lbs
13. El Bulli 2003-2004: 13.7 lbs
14. Essential Cuisine of Michel Bras: 3.5 lbs
15. Roger Verge’s Vegetables in the French Style: 3.1 lbs
16. The Natural Cuisine of Georges Blanc: 4.8 lbs
17. Young Man and The Sea (Pasternack): 2.6 lbs
18. Frankies Spuntino Cookbook: 1.8 lbs
19. Reinventing French Cuisine (Gagnaire): 3.4 lbs
20. Amanda Hesser’s New York Times Cookbook: 4.6 lbs
21. The Complete Robuchon: 3.2 lbs
22. The Art of Cooking With Vegetables (Passard): ?? lbs
23. Think Like a Chef (Colicchio): 1.7 lbs

Total Cookbook Weight: 154.6 lbs Total iPad Weight: 1.44 lb.

Digital cookbooks turn coffee table tomes into actual, usable cookbooks. Not having these essential reference works in a format that is easily searchable, transportable and usable is a BAD DEAL. What’s a WORSE DEAL is all the gasoline required to ship these books across the world. Digital cookbooks don’t require jet fuel to be delivered. They simply require a wi-fi connection. 

Allow us to point out this irony: Modernist Cuisine, authored by former Microsoft Chief Technology Office Nathan Myhrvold, champions avant-garde, scientific approaches to preparing food, but is not available on the iPad or Kindle. It weights 51.3 pounds. It was first published in 2011. 

Mastering the Art of French Cooking, authored by Julia Child, teaches French cooking. It is available on the iPad and the table of contents is fully hyperlinked. In fact, it’s possible to search the entire text of the digital edition for specific words. It was first published in 1961.  

If the Julia Child people can figure out how to make an ebook version work, we reckon the Modernist Cuisine people can figure it out too. 

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There are two California restaurants with three Michelin stars. One is Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry. The other is selling a Gilt City deal.

Bill Harlan’s The Restaurant at Meadowood is offering a five-course dinner for two, with wine pairings, tax, and tip for $633. The fine folks over at Eater San Francisco call it a GREAT DEAL. Is that the case? Let’s break down the numbers. 

Normally, Meadowood’s entry-level price point is $225 per person for a longer 8-9 course tasting, which means dinner for two, after tax and 20% tip costs $575, or $58 less than the Gilt City deal. Of course, that doesn’t include booze. Tack on optional wine pairings at $225 per person and you’re at a FINAL COST of $1,150. 

Our Advice: Meadowood really isn’t the type of place to go save a few bucks, it’s the type of place to break the bank. And while $633 certainly ain’t cheap, why not go for the longer menu at $570 for two? Maybe you’ll get the wine pairings, or maybe you’ll go by the glass and spend an extra $200 between the two of you, bringing your total to around $800 clams. That all said, this is definitely NOT A BAD DEAL. 

One More Thing: Gilt City’s offer is a great way to help Meadowood test out a new price point and fill up its books. An OpenTable.com search shows early and late available for parties of two or four most days of the week. It will be interesting to see whether this portends Meadowood lowering its entry-level price. As I reported in a Bloomberg article, the restaurant dropped its $125 four-course option when it re-opened after renovations this Spring. 

Gilt City is again offering a wedding deal at Mario Batali’s Del Posto. The $35,000 price is almost-all-inclusive: you get dancing, drinks, dinner, flowers, cake and a five-piece jazz ensemble. This is probably, sadly, definitely a decent enough DEAL for New York City. 

Still, lets’ take a closer look: The Del Posto offer includes a standing wedding reception, a 4-course meal and a five-hour premium open bar, all for up to 120 people. That comes out to $292 per person, though Del Posto charges an extra $250 per person for up to 30 more guests, which can bring the cost to $42,500 for 150 people. That’s still well below the average Manhattan wedding cost of $66,000, if you believe the latest survey data from The Knot and The Wedding Channel. 

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Here’s the thing. If you’re a New Yorker, you don’t PLAN on eating at Crif Dogs, you ACCIDENTALLY eat at Crif Dogs. And if there is any type of plan involved, it’s a half-baked effort to prevent a hangover. That’s not to speak ill of the (excellent) deep fried and bacon wrapped frankfurters here, but really, it’s not a dinner, it’s a hot dog, and because everything’s pretty much under $5 bucks, you don’t really need a coupon. 

Oh, one more thing, the offer is only valid on “school nights” at the East Village location. That means you can’t use the coupon after 8pm on Fridays or on the entire day on Saturdays (unless you’re at the Crif Dogs in Williamsburg). Oh, and no chili cheese fries. Do you really want to play by these anti-chili cheese fry rules just to save $7 bucks, especially when you’re in the somewhat altered state that brought you here? Sorry guys, it’s a BAD DEAL. 

Clearly, The Bad Deal has been away for too long. We apologize.