TS: "Fine dining" vs. your local Indian takeaway.

In Memphis, there are a few upscale restaurants that struggle to get butts in chairs during the workweek, and are offering very nice prix fixe meals on Mondays and Tuesdays for really good prices -- low price goes a long way toward fixing a stuffy atmosphere, and I'm pretty comfortable in a swanky environment anyway.

A nervous service staff will relax when they see the customer is relaxed, esp. if the customer is not ultra-picky and likely to freak if they find a bit of crab shell in their Veal Oscar.

I'm rambling. My short answer is "it depends," and learning to love fine dining doesn't have to diminish love of the good greasy spoon.

I would rather eat at home, and for those daring moments when I can't be arsed cooking/washing up, go to somewhere dead cheap that I know is nice but where there's no pressure to enjoy it just because you've spent a week's salary.

As for kebab shops - lauren otm - good ones are very few and far between. Decent fish'n'chips or a decent curry though I've found are increasingly easy to find. Maybe I'm just not as picky as I used to be.

I've found that the higher my income, the more comfortable i am in fine dining situations. Of course, in my case income corresponds directly to age & maturity, which i'm sure play into it (for me).

I think also there are two main types of fine dining establishments - ones where the people cooking and serving and eating there truly love food, and the other kind - where the people are there more for something other than the food. In those of the first sort, a person can relax and enjoy and those around will be happy to see the enjoyment and understand it and revel vicariously a bit in it. In the other sort, the diner feels scrutinized for choices made and the others present revel more in the discomfort than the enjoyment. I've been fortunate to eat in more of the first type of place than the second, though I have eaten in a few of the second type. I had a dinner in Morton's in Chicago that was one of the second type. The waiter was patronizing, the sommelier worse so. In retaliation, one of our party demanded ice for his wine glass, so there would be something truly shocking for them to tut-tut about. The place I had my most expensive meal ever (so far) was Verbena, somewhere in NYC, New Year's Eve 2000 (the real millenium). Many wonderful courses, each with a lovingly chosen wine, absolutely incredible. Our waiter wore a miniature red sequined cowboy hat and was delightful, though thoroughly professional. The food was inspired and completely on point. We were so sated and spectacularly drunk by the end of the meal, we walked back to Times Square through the snow, a gazillion blocks, buoyed by the food and bonhomie of the place. I don't know that I have a point here, really. Try to find the type 1 places and avoid the other type.

A good fine dining frequency for us seems to be once every two or three months, which happily coincides with how often we normally are able to get away from this outpost and back to a real city.

I think it is worth it, to address Ned's original post, but not if the cost is a stressor. And maybe it does take a bit of practice to really be able to relax and enjoy the whole experience - I feel especially fortunate that I got a good deal of fine dining practice in New Orleans in the '90s, where the food was always great and the atmosphere always relaxed.

Paul, how cool that you worked at Verbena! It was recommended to us by a friend, along with one or two others, as an excellent place. It was a meal (and evening) to remember.

I go to a couple of new upscale restaurants in Manhattan every week; I'd say my batting average is roughly three bad ones to every one good one. Meals that would be memorable several years later, like your Verbena experience, are pretty rare.

(I've actually put my name in the hat for assignment on the WTC project - we'll see what comes of it.)

In England it's "Meat and Two Veg" - we always were more frugal than our American cousins ;-)

I don't know what the 2 veg are though. Potatoes and cabbage probably.