THE BAD DEAL

We at The Bad Deal would like to give a Friday SHOUT OUT to all our hard-working, number-crunching, slim-toned, bikini-clad, caviar-consuming brothers and sisters at The Price Hike for this feature, which we think you’ll appreciate if you’re pinching your pennies like we are! Just to be clear, there are no actual brothers and sisters at The Price Hike, just Ryan Sutton, who happens to be the editor of The Bad Deal, and who happens to be me. We (ahem) just thought that sounded cooler. Check it out.

↵ Reblogged from pricehike

# the bad deal

# the price hike

# food

# restaurants

# ryan sutton

# a la carte arithmetic

Expensive Things Explained: Saison Edition

Earlier this year, the two-Michelin starred Saison moved from San Francisco’s Mission to a larger, more luxurious space on Townsend Street in the SoMa district. The menu is also more expensive, at $298, up from the previous price of $248 earlier this spring, which in turn is up from the (shorter) $198 weekday tasting menu offered around this time last April. That’s a total an increase of over $100, or 51% of the menu’s price, in a year’s time.

Saison currently serves California’s third most expensive tasting menu after Meadowood’s $500 chef’s tasting (inclusive of tip), and Urasawa’s $375 omakase. We’re always fans of discussing value and cost here at The Price Hike and The Bad Deal, so we were honored when Chef Joshua Skenes took the time to chat about his new space and prices. He also talks about a pretty cool payment alternative he’s trying to develop with Square.

We published a few snippets of this interview earlier this month after Michael Bauer awarded Saison three out of four stars in his review for The Chronicle. As promised, here’s the rest of our chat:

What prompted the price increase from $248 to $298? We have a lot of extremely expensive stuff in the new space. It’s the price of doing business. In terms of our working with a local fishermen, we set up a deal where we pay for his trip fee, where he goes down to Half Moon Bay or to Monterey or to up north and sources all these little things for us and it drives our cost up. But at the end of the day, it’s really just based on the cost of the ingredients…the menu price is always dictated by the cost of the ingredients… if we were to use a traditional model, I think around $400 for the menu would put us in line with average food costs for a restaurant. By that logic we’re underpriced and it’s a value for the menu.

Tumblr Shuts Down Storyboard 'For Now,' Says Editorial Team Is `Moving On'

We’re sad to hear this news, as Storyboard was a brilliant experiment in journalism and we hope it returns soon. It’s part of what separated Tumblr from the rest of the social media and blogging community; Storyboard was curated and it was editorial. It was a coherent and human voice that Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter all lacked and still lack.

Storyboard was an effort to give a voice to and shed light on Tumblr users like Jay Batlle, who creates beautiful art out of restaurant stationary. Storyboard told fascinating stories like how Lombardi’s and Motorino managed to keep serving pizza New in the wake of Superstorm Sandy’s power outages.

Stoyboard is why we know about the Letters to Newtown project.

Journalism is at a crossroads right now. It’s never been the most profitable of business models. We hope that the good people at Tumblr, who have been in immensely generous in giving a voice to us at The Bad Deal and The Price Hike, will come to see the value in producing editorial content, in giving good work to good journalists, and in helping to foster an ailing industry that’s the one of the backbones of our global community.

Chef Seamus Mullen talks with The Price Hike about why his delicious hams are so expensive and about how Tertulia, which I named New York’s best new restaurant of 2011, has been faring in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. Click through for the long and thoughtful interview. Many thanks to Amy Cao & the team at Fifty Three for providing us with Paper, the awesome iPad app we used illustrate this feature!

Here's a List of NYC Tasting Menus Prepared by Woman Head Chefs. Yeah, It's a Short List.

pricehike:

Vermilion (don’t eat here): $110

Annisa: (Michelin-starred): $78-$98

Pig & Khao (good food): $39.

City Grit (a cool rotating popup): prices will vary.

No, serving a three-hour, twenty-course menu generally isn’t part of the gender equality argument. But if male restaurateurs in New York are charging hundreds if not thousands of dollars for these long tastings, and if they’re making a steady (if slim) profit on those meals, and if they’re garnering excellent reviews by people like me for such efforts, I’d argue that we need a bit more diversity here. Can I get a hell yeah?

Shout out to San Francisco’s own Dominique Crenn for repping hard on the tasting menu front, serving 16-plus-course meals for $180. She’s America’s only woman chef with two Michelin stars. Mad respect.

And on a more optimistic note for New York, click through the headline for my Bloomberg News column, which lists some of the city’s best chefs who happen to be women; almost of them are owners or co-owners of the restaurants at which they cook. They rock. (Editor’s Note: I hope I’m missing a few here, and will update accordingly if y’all let me know. Tasting menus, by my definition, including five or more courses).

Update: Adds City Grit by Sarah Simmons to the list, which occasionally veers into tasting menu territory with its diversity of guest chefs. City Grit, of course, has a fine Tumblr account.

↵ Reblogged from pricehike

WD-50 Used to Be an Exciting Restaurant.

pricehike:

Sometimes, you gotta show a restaurant you love some tough love. Such is the case of WD-50, a restaurant that I’ve been visiting since 2005, and which I downgraded to two stars in my review for Bloomberg News this week. Last spring, the Dufresne’s restaurant eliminated its a la carte options in favor of a tasting menu-only format in the dining room.

Pricing isn’t necessarily the problem. WD-50’s longest tasting, at $155 is actually cheaper than the menus at other avant-garde spots like Alinea, Atera, and The Fat Duck. And the prix fixe-only policy is in line with other ambitious spots like Eleven Madison Park and Aldea that want to offer diners a singular experience.

The problem is the food, which isn’t as justifiably creative or whimsically satisfying as it used to be. And while a diner can’t expect WD-50 or any restaurant to reinvent the wheel year after year, it’s disappointing when a tasting menu that used to excite you at $95 in 2005 now bores you in 2013 at $155. After pairings, tax and tip, that comes to $644 for two.

The key mix of “wow” and gastronomic nourishment that diners used to find at WD-50 is now better accessed at other envelope-pushing spots like Corton, Empellon Cocina, and Torrisi.

It feels as if WD-50 was an academy-award winning rated-R movie that was watered down to a PG-13 version for network TV.

Read More

↵ Reblogged from pricehike

Red Hook Lobster Pound was destroyed by Sandy. They reopened today. They could've raised their lobster roll prices. But they didn't.

pricehike:

As I wrote in my Bloomberg News review, Red Hook serves the city’s best lobster rolls, period. They cost $16 before Sandy. And now after all the Hurricane-related repairs, they still cost $16, per a receptionist. Keep in mind that’s half the price of an inferior $32 roll at Mary’s Fish Camp in Manhattan.

So come to Red Hook instead. We’re calling this one a STRONG BUY.

Part of our mission at The Bad Deal is to show some love to Sandy-battered restaurants. So here we have Red Hook Lobster Pound, which tallied $100,000 in damage shortly after the superstorm struck (an estimate that surely rose). Now they’ve reopened. You should visit, for a very simple reason: Red Hook serves the city’s best lobster rolls.

↵ Reblogged from pricehike

# red hook lobster pound

# ryan sutton

Dear Google: Are you going to ask me if I want the entire webpage translated into English every time there’s a bottle of French wine on the list? Are you? Really?

This High End NYC Restaurant Makes You Pay For Your Meal Before You Eat Your Meal.

Atera is an envelope-pushing restaurant. The avant-garde Tribeca spot is wher quail eggs arrive on beds of grass, where lobster rolls come inside macarons, and where “charcoal” is made of chocolate. Atera serves 20-plus course meals that cost $165 before beverage, tax and tip. And now you’re expected to pay for your meal before your meal, not after it. The website of the two-Michelin-starred restaurant explains it all thusly:

“Due to the intimate size of Atera we require prepayment at the time your reservation is confirmed. The price for the tasting menu is $165 per person before tax and an 18% gratuity, making the total prepayment at the time of confirmation $209.35. Wine, drinks, and any add-ons will be billed the evening that you dine. Once purchased, all sales are final, however your reservation is transferable.”

Sure, many fine dining venues threaten cancellation fees, but Atera is only the second NYC spot to actually require prepayment (Brooklyn Fare is the other). Chicago eaters of course are familiar with such policies at Next and Alinea, where diners pay for dinner in advance via a much heralded ticketing system.

Make no mistake about it, pre-payment works in the favor of the restaurateur, and asks the diner to forfeit the price of dinner, plus tax and gratuity. if he or she can’t make it that evening. Chef Lightner was nice enough to chat with us about this development via email, here are highlights from our conversation:

When did you start the prepayment system and how have your guests responded to it? We started the prepayment about a month ago and guests have not had an issue with it, unless they are trying to cancel last minute.

Momofuku's got a new $95 tasting menu at Ma Peche. Check out the Real Cost Deets, Son.

↵ Reblogged from pricehike

Waffle House Charges You 20% for Security Because "It Use to Get Real Crazy Here."

We only hope customers get their 20% back if there’s a robbery. Right? Shout out to Eater for bringing this Fox story to our attention.

↵ Reblogged from pricehike

North Raises Prices, for Charity, and for Staff.

pricehike:

North Restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island, is raising its prices for some good causes. Owner James Mark explains on his Tumblr that the eclectic American spot, which sells oysters, country hams, $120 seafood platters and $14 ramen bowls, has hiked most of its prices by $1.

The reasons for the increase are simple: so that 50 cents from the sale of each menu item will go to a local food-based charity (similar to the Mission Chinese Way), and so that Mark can pay his staff a fair wage and provide health insurance amid rising food costs.

We’re calling this restaurant a #BUY and a #GOOD DEAL. Click through to read about the hike in Mark’s own words.

↵ Originally from foodbynorth

↵ Reblogged from pricehike

How to Stop Your Restaurant Website From Being Absolutely Awful, Which It Probably Is.

Hint. No flash, no music. Of course, you could just make life easier for everyone and join Tumblr like these fine restaurants, some of whom use the blogging platform for their proper websites.

Just one disagreement with Econsultancy, the publisher of this fine list. PDF menus are totally cool on websites, as they’re easily searchable and loadable, even on mobile phones. If anything, we prefer PDF menus as they’re more readily save-able and printable than others. (Shout out to the NYT’s Dan Saltzstein for tweeting this article last week).

# restaurant websites

Here’s a List of Restaurants on Tumblr

We at The Price Hike and The Bad Deal hope this list can rival the number of restaurants on Facebook one day. As we’ve said before, Tumblr is a fine way to share your daily menus and your daily dishes with your daily diners on a daily basis. Let us know if we’re missing anyone and we’ll add’em on, fine brothers and sisters.

Update (12:10pm): added Nopalize, Pies & Thighs and more. Russ & Daughter’s isn’t a restaurant but they sell good caviar and they rock so why the heck not include them?.

Update (4:43pm): added Luke’s Lobster (duh), The Meatball Shop, the critically acclaimed Red Medicine and a whole lot more after Tumblr’s Food & Beverage Evangelist Jen Pelka kindly sent over (a long list of) what we were missing.

You know you’ve had dinner at Masa, America’s most expensive restaurant, when your credit card company sends you a fraud alert. Shout out to Next Food Network Star & Do or Dine chef Justin Warner for tweeting us this screenshot. Dinner for two at the sushi spot, after tax & 20% tip, starts at $1,160. So all things considered, Mr. Warner got off pretty easy.

# next food network star