240 Euro lunch per person at Guy Savoy, Paris.

How can you have a 24 course meal?

If I'm having a special dinner I usually either skip lunch ofhave somethng VERY light to have room.

And that's for something with just 3 courses - plus the amuse bouche.

L'Ambroisie for lunch and Le Meurice for dinner in Paris. Both worth every penny.

Bacon for dinner in Antibes. Total rip-off.

If everyone only answered each question exactly as asked on this forum our little world here would be a very boring place.

>>How can you have a 24 course meal?<<

First, such a dinner lasts 5 hours.

Second, you get just very tiny bits, just to tease the palate.

It is a very enjoyable way to spend an evening when every ten minutes or so the waitress comes with another tiny bit of something that you have never tasted before (even if you regularly enjoy gourmet cuisine). Some ingredients and/or flavors or combinations of flavors or textures are very daring. Such a meal is an adventure.

(Can you imagine how adventurous it was in Atlanta when we were served "root beer float" as the intermediate course between fish and meat? Or, in Berlin, fried sherry with jamon iberico? (The chef explained who he prepared the fried sherry. It is a procedure that takes several days and a degree in chemistry.)

I can see spending a huge amount on a dining experience in Paris, and we have done so.

But IMO, our most extravagant spending was done on St. Bart's having a $75 club sandwich & a $10 diet coke. It was on St. Jean beach,2 sandwiches, 2 diet cokes--$170!

The sandwich did have a very small amount of lobster in it, but in the Caribbean lobster is relatively cheap.

I don't really know. Certainly, NOMA in Copenhagen is pretty steep. So was French Laundry. There was a sushi place in Tokyo that I can't remember that was well over $200 per person (excluding drinks). Wine/booze, of course, throws everything off-kilter.

$120 each at Linadombra in Venice, the best meal we had in Italy. I remember the pasta course very well: house-made ravioli, and that my DH got the grilled fish platter as his main course. Mostly, however, I remember the view, and how kind the waiter was to a young-ish couple who spoke little Italian but loved their food.

I once spent 5.99 for a chesseburger.

In all honesty my most expensive meal was in Portugal in a outdoor venue, I had grilled sword fish my bride had some sort of lobster pasta, the wine was flowing, apps, dessert etc... We maybe spent 150.

nytraveler, another response to

>>How can you have a 24 course meal?<<

We once had a 30-odd course meal, at Juniper outside Manchester (England). It was amazing & just as described in this review - http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...rink.shopping1.

And Paul Kitching is now moving to Edinburgh - huzzah !

my first dinner with my now ex-wife.

Ultimately cost me half a million dollars.

Restaurant at Villa d'Este, Cernobbio, Lake Como, last year, for my big birthday.

Glad we did it, though.


12 course dinner at Tetsuya's, Sydney.

GB944,

I would be ROFLMAO if the memories didn't hurt so much.

Not the largest amount of money I've ever spent, but the most shocking tab for what we'd had was the bill for 4 people at a sit down fast food place in Montreux, Switzerland.

Alinea, Chicago. Amazing experience but with the
step-up wine pairing...very, very expensive.

This is one of the saddest stories of my life. My husband graduated from a program at the EPFL and the class of 30 or so decided that they would celebrate after the graduation at Rochat in Crissier, Switzerland which is a some-starred Michelin restaurant, or at least it was. We had to pay 250 Swiss Francs each beforehand. Well, before the graduation I used a new perfume that gave me an absolutely horrendous migraine - the kind where you get nauseous and see double. By the time we got to the restaurant I was running downstairs to the loo every 5 minutes getting sick and never ate even one bite of that food! In fact, I took a taxi home after the second round of amuses bouches. My husband stayed at my insistance and he and another guy split all of my food! Maybe someday we will have enough of a reason to spend that kind of money to go back there.

Sad for you. Maybe not so sad for your husband and the other guy who got to eat your food!

And I bet your husband still mentions how good the meal was every so often.
I had a similar experience when we went to a well known gourmet restaurant in Montpellier but I had such a horrible allergy attack that I couldn't taste or smell anything while everybody else were going ooh aahh the whole 3 hours. We also ordered a series of special wines which all tasted like paint to me. I had to stay and suffered all the way to the end because I had to pay our share of the bill and drove our friends back to the hotel. I quietly get really irked everytime they talked about the best meal they've ever had in southern France.

Le Bec Fin

Gordon Ramsay's - Royal Hospital

Wiggies Bar in Castries, St. Lucia. I got the Wiggie Burger. It was bad. I got deathly ill. Had to be airlifted to Miami and put into ICU.