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>[1987] However, at a top restaurant such as Masa’s in San Francisco a fixed-price meal runs $48 (almost certainly excluding drinks and tip), while diners at Be

>[1987] However, at a top restaurant such as Masa’s in San Francisco a fixed-price meal runs $48 (almost certainly excluding drinks and tip), while diners at Berkeley’s innovative Chez Panisse can expect to pay at least $45. Gosh - I'm pretty sure the last time I walked out of Chez Panisse it wasn't for less than $250 each (with wine).. inflation surely doesn't count for this?`

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
Do we have an index of the ratio between the cost of fine dining and peasant/fast food over the last few centuries?
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  it might be hard to do, particularly for anything that was pre-industrial. aristocrats mostly ate in their homes with a massive kitchen, gardening, hunting staff. fine dining in a city needs a support base, and for a good deal of history there weren't enough people who could afford to eat out luxury food to support a fine dining scene.
vkou 5y ago
Overall inflation doesn't account for it. A dollar today is worth ~40 cents back then. Wage inflation for professionals living in San Francisco, however, does. A lot more people in SF are making ~$400,000/year, than were making ~$10,000/year, back then. Hence, the restaurant can charge ~4x, and still be fill its tables every night.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
daggersandscars 5y ago
There's multiple factors in play here. Inflation is one. Population growth is another. The Bay-area population went up by ~2 million people between 1990 and 2020. Even if the income distribution remains the same, the number of potential diners who can afford an expensive meal goes up. Income distribution is another. If the percentage of the population who could afford an expensive meal and would buy one goes up, the number of potential diners goes up even faster. Perceived social impact of an expensive meal is another factor. If more people believe there is social benefit in buying to an expensive meal, the number of potential diners goes up. This could be due to a larger pool of expensive meal buyers trying to impress each other, better awareness of expensive restaurants by the general population, etc. Edit: changed "going to an expensive meal" to "buying [...]"
- amyjess 5y ago
  > Population growth is another. The Bay-area population went up by ~2 million people between 1990 and 2020. Even if the income distribution remains the same, the number of potential diners who can afford an expensive meal goes up. And with that, the housing situation in the Bay Area has seen rents skyrocket disproportionately high compared with the rest of the country. At least some of the cost of the meal goes to the restaurant baking in their increased overhead, which again, is higher than it would be in the rest of the country. (and if Chez Panisse owns its space, you can exchange "rent" with "property tax")
  - bcrosby95 5y ago
    Note that if Chez Panisse owns its space, it likely pays practically nothing in property taxes considering businesses benefit from prop 13 too.
    - mannerheim 5y ago
      Even without rent or property tax, there's still opportunity cost. If they could make more money renting out the building than their business makes, it isn't worth it.
Aunche 5y ago
Part of it is that fine dining is much more labor intensive now than it used to be. Chocolate lava cake was at the pinnacle of fine dining desserts in 1987, but now it's considered rather pedestrian.
- tony0x02 5y ago
  Source? Just wondering where you got this info from.
  - Aunche 5y ago
    Jean-Georges allegedly invented the dessert in 1987, having recently received the highest possible rating from a NYT review. He later went on to be a 3 Michelin star chef. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_chocolate_cake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_chocolate_cake
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  Cook it a bit longer and it’s a soufflé
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    Nope, a proper lava cake is a layer of cake surrounding a layer of ganache. Under-cooking a chocolate cake is the lazy way. Also a soufflé has a high % of whipped egg whites versus a typical cake which has unwhipped eggs but a bit of baking powder.
- OJFord 5y ago
  To put it politely. There must be vanishingly few places that'd consider themselves to offer fine dining and also wish to be seen serving it! I don't think that really has anything to do with it being labour intensive, nor suggests that it must be even more so in the post-lava-cake era though. It just 'went viral', was over done (no pun intended), and lost its mystique. The same no doubt happened to all manner of exotic (or once exotic) dishes before it.
refurb 5y ago
Why would inflation measure some Veblen good only a small fraction of the population can afford? The price of Rolex watches has also massively increased, but that doesn’t go into inflation calculations either.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

Do we have an index of the ratio between the cost of fine dining and peasant/fast food over the last few centuries?

bobthepanda 5y ago
it might be hard to do, particularly for anything that was pre-industrial. aristocrats mostly ate in their homes with a massive kitchen, gardening, hunting staff. fine dining in a city needs a support base, and for a good deal of history there weren't enough people who could afford to eat out luxury food to support a fine dining scene.

vkou 5y ago

Overall inflation doesn't account for it. A dollar today is worth ~40 cents back then. Wage inflation for professionals living in San Francisco, however, does. A lot more people in SF are making ~$400,000/year, than were making ~$10,000/year, back then. Hence, the restaurant can charge ~4x, and still be fill its tables every night.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

daggersandscars 5y ago

There's multiple factors in play here. Inflation is one. Population growth is another. The Bay-area population went up by ~2 million people between 1990 and 2020. Even if the income distribution remains the same, the number of potential diners who can afford an expensive meal goes up. Income distribution is another. If the percentage of the population who could afford an expensive meal and would buy one goes up, the number of potential diners goes up even faster. Perceived social impact of an expensive meal is another factor. If more people believe there is social benefit in buying to an expensive meal, the number of potential diners goes up. This could be due to a larger pool of expensive meal buyers trying to impress each other, better awareness of expensive restaurants by the general population, etc. Edit: changed "going to an expensive meal" to "buying [...]"

amyjess 5y ago
> Population growth is another. The Bay-area population went up by ~2 million people between 1990 and 2020. Even if the income distribution remains the same, the number of potential diners who can afford an expensive meal goes up. And with that, the housing situation in the Bay Area has seen rents skyrocket disproportionately high compared with the rest of the country. At least some of the cost of the meal goes to the restaurant baking in their increased overhead, which again, is higher than it would be in the rest of the country. (and if Chez Panisse owns its space, you can exchange "rent" with "property tax")
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  Note that if Chez Panisse owns its space, it likely pays practically nothing in property taxes considering businesses benefit from prop 13 too.
  - mannerheim 5y ago
    Even without rent or property tax, there's still opportunity cost. If they could make more money renting out the building than their business makes, it isn't worth it.

Aunche 5y ago

Part of it is that fine dining is much more labor intensive now than it used to be. Chocolate lava cake was at the pinnacle of fine dining desserts in 1987, but now it's considered rather pedestrian.

tony0x02 5y ago
Source? Just wondering where you got this info from.
- Aunche 5y ago
  Jean-Georges allegedly invented the dessert in 1987, having recently received the highest possible rating from a NYT review. He later went on to be a 3 Michelin star chef. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_chocolate_cake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_chocolate_cake
quickthrower2 5y ago
Cook it a bit longer and it’s a soufflé
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  Nope, a proper lava cake is a layer of cake surrounding a layer of ganache. Under-cooking a chocolate cake is the lazy way. Also a soufflé has a high % of whipped egg whites versus a typical cake which has unwhipped eggs but a bit of baking powder.
OJFord 5y ago
To put it politely. There must be vanishingly few places that'd consider themselves to offer fine dining and also wish to be seen serving it! I don't think that really has anything to do with it being labour intensive, nor suggests that it must be even more so in the post-lava-cake era though. It just 'went viral', was over done (no pun intended), and lost its mystique. The same no doubt happened to all manner of exotic (or once exotic) dishes before it.

refurb 5y ago

Why would inflation measure some Veblen good only a small fraction of the population can afford? The price of Rolex watches has also massively increased, but that doesn’t go into inflation calculations either.