the gift of an experience: fine restaurants No comments yet

If you have friends that have "everything" why not get them an "experience"?  We’ve been increasingly giving "experiences" as gifts.  There are lots of obvious choices: games, spas, restaurant gift cards, etc…  Afterall some of them are very easy to get, especially with today’s simplicity of gift certificates (although I would NOT recommend using them in most cases). 

We’ll start a series of posts about cool experiences.  The first one is about restaurants.  I was just reading the corriere della sera and they were reporting that Forbes published the list of the top 12 most expensive restaurants in the world.   If you have friends that are into food than you should seriously think about getting them a gift certificate (or just a reservation) to one of these restaurants! 

The list looks very impressing and unfortunately I have not been to any of them :(.  So, I added them to my wishpot wishlist!

• La Pergola - This is an Italian joint in Rome
• Tetsuya - a Japanese restaurant in Sydney
• The French Laundry - The Napa Valley Destination (note the capital N!).  I tried to go to this one, but we could not get a table
• Masa - THE sushi place in NYC
• Joel Robuchon - In Vegas.  I actually went to the "cafe" version.  That was one of the the most "upscale" cafe I have been, so the real thing must be really good.
• Alinea - in Chicago.  I’d never heard of it.  I guess it’s in my todo list for when I go to Chicago.
• Toque - in Montreal
• El Bulli - I really want to go to this place.  It’s a the top of my restaurant wishlist! Ferran Adrià has achieved a god-status chef level and I really want to check it out.  Hope that it’s worth the $300/person (without wine!).
• l’Arpege - in Paris
• Restaurant Gordon Ramsay - In London.  After seeing Gordon Ramsey on kitchen nightmare (not the Fox version…the BBC one is much better) he has really become one of my favorite chefs.  Too bad it’s almost impossible to get a reservation.
• Aragawa - In Tokyo.  The rumor has it that they have one of those nice $400 steaks.
• Bukhara - in Delhi.   

The one thing that seems to be clear is that (1) wine is not included in any of the prices mentioned in the Forbes article.  Anyone should know that makes or break both the meal and the bank! (2) It seems that the rank is based solely on the "standard preset meal" - of course you could spend lots more if you ordered off the menu or you went for special menu.    There was also a good post about this sometime ago on the vinography blog and they recommended to triple the prices.

Anyway…it seems there is some good place to go, regardless from where you are.