ELV has maintained for years that Vegas is the most expensive restaurant city in America.
Further proof (as if any is needed):
A three-course lunch at Cafe Boulud in New York City (one of ELV’s favorite restaurants in the world), now runs $24 — or roughly the price of an appetizer at most Wynn restaurants.
Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich’s Del Posto (probably the most expensive Italian restaurant in the Big Apple), now offers its nine-course, Grand Tasting Menu for $125 — exactly ten buckeroonies less than the steak for two runs at Batali and Bastianich’s Carnevino in The Palazzo.
Hmmm….$62.50 for 9 courses of food or $67.50 for half a steak*….? You Make The Call!
(Source: New York Magazine, February 2, 2009)
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* That same cote de boeuf (for two) cost $175 when Carnevino first opened.
More proof. Those people over at Zagat get it right sometimes… http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/03/restaurants-expensive-dine-forbeslife-cx_pl_1104restaurants.html
I knew I had read this somewhere before, so there you go.
And Del Posto is divine. Chef Ladner does an amazing job.
Zagat finally got around to recognizing what we’ve been saying (and what’s been true) since at least 2003.
It was probably around December 2001 when ELV and The Food Gal® first noticed that Big Apple restaurants seemed a lot cheaper than Vegas ones. At the time we thought it was just a product of the post 9/11 economy — but our out-of-control pricing (tourist gouging?) has continued unabated since then.
There are ways of eating well cheaply here, but in particular, I must say, CarneVino really knows how to sock-it-to-ya. And in general, it seems anything with the name ‘kobe’ on it (usually American wagyu hybrid) seems to have a built-in sucker tax. Do you know they serve Kobe Sliders at Ruby’s diners now? And they’re as good as any others, of course.
The over-priced restaurants come with the “convenience” of being located inside a casino. It’s why the movie theaters in this country get away with charging $7 for a large popcorn. You are there, you are hungry, you are escaping reality for a couple of hours…you drop the seven-bills on the 86-cents of popcorn you are consuming. That is the casino mentality on overcharging inside restaurants. There are a few great deals out there, especially now with reduced prix fixe menus abound, and inside some of the independantly operated casino restaurants. But for great value dining, in most cases, look east and west of Las Vegas Blvd.
As a former NY’er one of my favorite things to do is eat at the Vegas equivalents of NY standards such as Circo, Le Circ, B&B (Babbo in NYC), DB Bistro, etc. In each the prices in NYC are much higher, in fact the BD Burger (which is legendary) is 1/2 the price in Vegas last I checked. Of course we have our share of ridiculousness here too such as the mentioned Carnevino (which is utterly divine if you ignore the bill) or Atelier but in general I find fine dining prices better in Vegas. The problem comes with the mid-tier restaurants, for example I ate the most ridiculously over priced meal last night at Fixx in Bellagio with wine that was warmer than the room temperature… the “good dining” tier of restaurants need to come back to reality, prices are just too high for the caliber of food & service provided in many of these joints, as well as the casino owned extravagances such as Switch.