THE PRICE HIKE

Dear Miguel Sanchez Romera:

I’m writing to let you know what’s wrong with Romera, your debut New York restaurant in Manhattan’s Dream Downtown hotel. No, I haven’t dined at Romera. And yes, your so-called neurogastronomical creations look delicious. 

I’ll give Romera a proper review later this autumn in my Bloomberg column. But right now, I feel compelled to stage a little intervention. You’re making it very difficult for diners to find out how much they’ll spend at your very expensive restaurant, and that’s not fair to anyone.

Let me tell you a little story. Four years ago, I noticed Thomas Keller’s Per Se didn’t have an online wine list. So I called up and asked the receptionist to send a copy to my (pseudonymous) email address. Soon afterwards, a .pdf of Per Se’s wine collection arrived in my inbox. Keller’s famed eatery now publishes that list on its website; it also updates the $295 tasting menu online, every day.

I make this comparison because your month-old Romera is one of the most expensive American restaurants to open since Per Se’s debut in 2004. Problem is, Romera’s website doesn’t once mention the menu’s price ($245 per person), nor does the website describe any of the dishes on the menu. Further, Romera doesn’t publish the price of its wine pairings; nor does it publish its wines-by-the-glass or the wines-by-the-bottle list.

So I called up Romera (anonymously) last week to find out how much I might spend on dinner. Here’s how that conversation with your receptionist went:

PRICE HIKE: How much are wine pairings at Romera?

ROMERA: They start at one-third of the menu price.

PRICE HIKE: Okay, a third of the menu price. And what would that be?

ROMERA: The eleven-course menu is $245

PRICE HIKE: No, I mean, what’s a third of the menu price?

ROMERA: [Brief pause]: Around $83-$85 and then it goes up from there.

PRICE HIKE: Well, how much do people usually spend?

ROMERA: That depends on how much they’d like to spend.

PRICE HIKE: Fair enough. Do you have a wines-by-the-glass list or bottle list you could send me by email so I can figure out how much I might spend? 

ROMERA: We save that for people who have reservations.

That’s how the first call ended; your receptionist prevented me from finding out how much I would spend on wine. I typically prefer to know that information BEFORE I make a credit-card guaranteed reservation (whose no-show fee is justifiably 50% of the table, so $245 for a party of two). 

Just to be sure that conversation wasn’t a fluke, I called up the next day and asked the receptionist if she might send me the wine-list. The receptionist said she didn’t have the list on her, but that a sommelier would be happy to call later that day to discuss all oenophilic options. That was almost 72 hours ago. No one has called me back yet.  

If the wine pairings start around $83 or so, then dinner for two, plus pairings, after tax and tip, would cost $832. That’s a lot of money. Of course, not everyone orders wine pairings, but I can’t figure out how much wines by-the-glass (or bottles) are because your staff won’t send me those numbers.

My question is this: Why do you make it so hard for guests to find out how much they’ll spend at your very expensive restaurant? More specifically:

• Why do you express your wine pairing prices as a fraction? Did you ever visit a pizzeria where the price of a large Pepsi was listed as 1/3 of a slice? That would seem silly, wouldn’t it?

If you’re trying to be a semi-private dinner club like Rao’s, just let me know and I’ll back off. But if a restaurant is public, pricing should be public and transparent. It should be available on the restaurant’s website and via the eatery’s receptionist.

Ascertaining the price of a meal should not require fact checking through a restaurant’s publicist, something a regular consumer doesn’t have access to.

The Price Hike doesn’t argue in favor of pricing transparency just for transparency’s sake. We argue to protect consumers, to preserve value. When consumers sit down for dinner and unknown wine prices start popping up, that reduces the value of a meal. That takes dinner, a culinary experience, and turns it into a transactional experience. It takes the focus off of eating; it puts the focus on mental math.  

What would you say to a couple who showed up at your restaurant and complained they weren’t expecting the wine to be so expensive? That’s how pricing transparency affects value. Sure, $83 for a pairing sounds like a deal to me, but maybe that’s exorbitant to another guest. Clarity, not opacity, is the solution to that problem. Prices don’t lie. 

And because value is subjective and dependent on one’s income, these standards are just as true at a cheap hole in the wall as they are at a three-Michelin starred eatery (But to be honest: would I have penned this letter if Romera had a lower price point? No.) 

Incidentally, just to make sure I had everything straight, I tried making a third phone call to Romera. It was on a Sunday, during the restaurant’s stated reservation hours, on a day the website said the restaurant was open for dinner service. No one picked up. “You have reached the voice-mail box of Romera New York.” That’s the answering machine message I received.

Here’s a recommendation: If you don’t have a reservationist who picks up the phone, try setting up a messaging system that informs consumers of vital data points like: Where Romera is located, how to get there, whether there’s a dress code, etc. Got it?

Could have I complained about all this in a formal restaurant review? Yeah, but problem is I would have extinguished my entire word count before even getting to your food. So please be more honest with potential diners, and take care of these administrative issues. I look forward to hearing back, and I can’t wait to visit your restaurant.

Sincerely,

Ryan Sutton

p.s. I’d like to see more wine transparency from Momofuku Ko (which doesn’t publish pairing prices), Alinea (which used fractional pricing during my visit) and a few other venues I’ll be writing about shortly.

p.p.s. No, Per Se doesn’t publish its wine pairing prices either, as the restaurant, in my experience, emphasizes wine by the glass or half-bottles.