Pretentious Super Taster Fancy Dancy Thread

Welp dinner at the French Laundry tonight. I'm expected a great meal that doesn't even come close to justifying the price tag. Should be interesting.

ZyyzYzzy said:

Please provide an in depth review of all courses. Want to do it for my wife for our 10th anni

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go check out the freaks on yelp for that. I'll let you know how it was overall and if there were any crazy highlights. Good luck with the reservation my wife checks (ed) pretty often and 5 or 6 days ago someone canceled theirs for the 530 dinner slot tonight so she snagged up. First one she's seen in a while although I have read that more and more of em are popping up lately as the post remodel hype starts dying down. I think the system is all online now, none of that calling in bullshit.

Exceeded expectations. Mostly hits, a couple mehs (comparitively to the other plates). Will post more tomorrow still on cell.

So ya, it was a great experience. Wife and I even decided we'd probably do it again in a year or two maybe in spring or summer for a totally different menu vibe.

What we did was order each supplemental, but only one so we could also try the non supplemental, so on the supplemental course we'd have two different plates come out and we'd eat half and swap plates. Worked out best for trying the maximum amount of stuff, although for the "legendary" oyster and pearls 1st course which is served year round, i'd highly recomend skipping the $60 supplemental (for the upgraded cavier) because the supplemental is an almost completely different bowl and you don't get the oysters but a trout cake. It was really good, and you could definately notice a difference in the 'pearls', but the OG oyster dish was so amazing we instantly regretted having to share it.

I'd say all other supplementals were worth the extra money. We got lucky and hit the window of white truffle season so the supplemental white truffle risotto was something i'd never thought would live up to the hype but dang it was memorable, and I have a feeling they don't make any money on it looking at white truffle prices online. It cost an extra $175 but I swear to god they shave at least half an ounce of truffle on your risotto in front of you (seems like more than half ounce really but I doubt it was).

The a5 wagyu was an extra 100 bucks but it was really cool to try, especially considering the non-supplemental counterpart was lamb, and although lamb is one of my favorite meats it was fairly underwhelming as far as the whole meal went.

Wine, we said fuck it and didn't really care about the price so we told the sommelier to pick us out three glasses to get us through the three sections of the meal (start / fish / meat). It was all great but added a total of $300 to the bill.

Major highlights in order were:

White truffle risotto
Oyster and Pearls
A5 Wagyu dish

Those will probably be the three dishes that I can conjure up the tastes and experience eating years from now. Everything else was great, but those stood out.

Total cost was something like 1200 bucks, which isn't a huge deal on paper for us but still seems like insanity for a 3 hour meal but it is a helluva experience. In the future we'd probably opt out of the wine and not get the oyster and pearl supplemental, which would have brought the bill down around 800, although if you know it's going to be the only time you ever go you might as well say fuck it and get the wine.

Some other random notes:

Wear the lightest sports coat, shirt and pants you can find. You're expected to keep your coat on during the meal and it can get warm.

If you really want to nail a special date for reservations and money is less of a concern, just get a reservation for 4 (they are always available a couple months out). We saw multiple couples that did this and they'll give you more dishes (looked like some special ones) and/or let you pick and choose extra plates from the vegetarian (garden) menu as you go.

McShrimp said:

What, no pictures? Worst food blog ever, 0/10

Seriously though, that sounds awesome. I think I'm too much of a cheapass to ever enjoy a $1200 meal, just be thinking of the cost the whole time. Maybe until the wine started flowing though...

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We left our phones in the truck. A nice few hours to completely unplug.

BrutulTM said:

I don't think I would ever do this, at least not at that price tag, but it would be a fun experience if someone else was buying. What were the desserts?

Also, this thread title is wrong IMO. Super tasters are people like Noodleface that had parents with no spine and grew up eating Kraft Macaroni and Cheese with cut up hot dogs in it for every meal and thus as adults say things like "onions are disgusting" with a straight face. Fine dining, while pretentious and ridiculous, is sort of the opposite of that.

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Tasting menu's typically just sperge out a huge number of deserts at you at the end of the meal. I think it was 5 deserts (two ice creams, a fancy cheesecake which was my favorite, german chocolate cake, those fancy donut hole thingies) plus chocolates, caramels and a couple other little things. We just took a few bites of everything.

Oh I did forget that there was an end of meal fried cheese 'ball' type deal that was pretty ridiculous. Served before the deserts.