01.01.70
At those restaurants where the napkins are of finest linen, the waiters multilingual and the menus littered with foams, sea spray and snail porridge, the ticket price for a main course is now nudging that once-insurpassable $50 tag.
Fifty dollars for dinner? It may seem unconscionable to some, but ah, say the restaurateurs, we really should be charging at least 10 bucks more.
So the Star-Times repaired to the distressed-brick surrounds of the Roxy, the most recent of a wave of new fine-dining establishments in downtown Auckland to tot up why restaurant meals cost so much.
Executive chef Sean Marshall, just arrived back in Auckland from Wellington's stylish Matterhorn, agrees to wheel out the "fish soup", part of his 10-course degustation menu ($140), but which, if it stood alone, would retail for a substantial $42. This, he says, is a great dish – complex, time-consuming, demanding of expensive, difficult-to-source ingredients – to show people and hear them declare "I'm not making that at home".
Source: Sunday Star Times