$5500 dinner - is there a moral component

And whether they do or not, it’s not for me to know. They could be philanthropists in secret, they could not be. I would hope that their wealth correlates with some meaningful, positive engagement in the world, but at the end of the day, it’s not really my business or interest to question the morality of someone else’s ability to enjoy a special dinner at a nice restaurant. I certainly wouldn’t write an article about it.

2 Likes

If as the editor of a food site / mailing list / whatever I hired somebody to write an article about a $5500 dinner, and what he turned in didn’t report the hedonistic details, that’d be the last gig he’d get from me.

Here he went to Noma and basically spent a lot of breath saying that it’s impractical to communicate the experience of eating at Noma:

“When you collapse all the writing around it, what makes Noma Noma is this small spark of an interaction that happens inside you. Literally, it’s inside you. You ingest it. It is food. And this spark is then amplified and stoked by memory, by the room you’re in, the people you’re with, the time of day, what else is going on in the world that moment, until it’s a cultural contagion. But it all starts with a small bite.”

Got it, it’s about “time and place.” But the article seems so unnecessary if its thrust is that eating at Noma is a special phenomenon because of the diner’s qualia.

Meanwhile, here he is at the James Beard awards, asking chefs “Which Chef Would You Cook and Eat?” You read that right.

Quality journalism.

For though I can articulate that a poached quail egg arrived tiled with delicate nasturtium leaves facedown, stems out on a bed of moss beside a branch made of beer and mead to which herbs were attached with ant paste, nothing true is thereby communicated.

That makes some sense to me, since a lot of dishes at Noma contain multiple ingredients you’ve never tasted and never will. Still nothing there I’m interested in.

I’m interested precisely because it would be quite foreign to me, and from what little I’ve sampled at In Situ (the sheep’s milk yogurt and sorrel granita dessert) and also what I can imagine based off of pictures and food descriptions, I get the sense that Rene Redzepi has a very interesting viewpoint. The dessert, by the way, was quite masterful, and the best composed dish I’ve had at In Situ so far. I know that the actual experience may be different, and that there may be some flops in Noma’s menu as a byproduct of rampant experimentation, but there’s enough to keep me very interested. I’m not familiar with Danish food, but it’s a viewpoint I’d like to experience at a high level.

I just think that an article telling me that basically “I can’t tell you what dining at Noma is like” after asking “what’s it like? is it worth the hype?” is kind of pointless.

Wow, I’m so glad I brought this up!

Second of all, having thought about it the “moral” part is really just that no way in hell would I pay that much money for food. It would be at least a venial sin :slight_smile: Immoral for me. And if someone gave me $5500 and said I could either have that meal or give it to charity, I’d choose the latter.

First of all, I’m glad I brought this up cause what a mess that guy is. I’m in total agreement with that. Thanks y’all. Cath

… does this mean you’re NOT paying for dinner?

Oh, I’ll definitely pay for dinner, my dear friend. Just not THAT dinner :slight_smile:

I love that nothing more than the use of logic is considered offensive in these forums.

Lmao