i beg to differ. whether or not it's worth $500 is another matter entirely, and totally subjective, but a bottle of cristal champagne tastes a hell of a lot be

i beg to differ. whether or not it's worth $500 is another matter entirely, and totally subjective, but a bottle of cristal champagne tastes a hell of a lot better than a middling $30 bottle of bubbly you can buy at the supermarket. and fwiw, a bottle of cristal (or any $500 restaurant bottle) doesn't cost nearly that much if you buy it yourself. the real price is like $150-$250. same goes for the steak. the last expensive steak i had was $120 menu price, a grass-fed wagyu-style aged tomahawk ribeye - it was significantly better tasting than a $50 'good restaurant' steak which is just a standard usda prime or lesser steal marked up by 2x. a bottle of cristal or a high end aged steak - these things are unquestionably better than their downmarket alternatives - but where this value spectrum goes off the rails is when you get into the really expensive stuff, the stuff that only very rich people are competing to buy.