i track consumer prices. i am the nyc food critic for bloomberg news. i am ryan sutton.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Say It Loud: Food Costs What the Market Requires Not What Your Nostalgia Desires.
This week I review Carbone in my Blooomberg column, awarding 3.5 stars to the high-end red sauce joint in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. It isn’t just one of our city’s best new restaurants, it’s one of Manhattan’s best seafood spots, period.
Carbone’s cuisine is the cuisine I ate while growing up on Long Island, at cheap seafood shacks and affordable Italian-American restaurants. Except Carbone isn’t cheap, or affordable, not by Italian-American standards, and not by New York standards. Dinner for two, after wine, tax and tip, can easily cost $350-$400 for two, almost as much as dinner at Jean-Georges.
Tumblr Shuts Down Storyboard 'For Now,' Says Editorial Team Is `Moving On'
We’re sad to hear this news, as Storyboard was a brilliant experiment in journalism and we hope it returns soon. It’s part of what separated Tumblr from the rest of the social media and blogging community; Storyboard was curated and it was editorial. It was a coherent and human voice that Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter all lacked and still lack.
Storyboard was an effort to give a voice to and shed light on Tumblr users like Jay Batlle, who creates beautiful art out of restaurant stationary. Storyboard told fascinating stories like how Lombardi’s and Motorino managed to keep serving pizza New in the wake of Superstorm Sandy’s power outages.
Stoyboard is why we know about the Letters to Newtown project.
Journalism is at a crossroads right now. It’s never been the most profitable of business models. We hope that the good people at Tumblr, who have been in immensely generous in giving a voice to us at The Bad Deal and The Price Hike, will come to see the value in producing editorial content, in giving good work to good journalists, and to helping foster an ailing industry that’s the one of the backbones of our global community.
Brooklyn's Prime Meats now charges more than Manhattan's Minetta for its BIG steak.
Minetta Tavern = $140. Prime Meats = $142. The Frankies don’t pay their meat suppliers any less just because they’re located in Brooklyn, so you as a customer shouldn’t really pay any less either. Prime Meats also takes Amex again. We dig it.
Would You Rather Spend $2,000 on a Tasting Menu in Bolivia or Copenhagen?
So Claus Meyer owns two restaurants. One is Noma in Copenhagen, which will cost you about $437. The other is Gustu in La Paz, Bolivia, where the wine-paired tasting will run you about $130. Sounds cheaper, right? Not quite. After airfare, hotels, visas and yellow fever shots, you’ll actually spend a few dollars less in Copenhagen if you’re flying from New York. Check out The Price Hike and Bad Deal math below.
This High End NYC Restaurant Makes You Pay For Your Meal Before You Eat Your Meal.
North Raises Prices, for Charity, and for Staff.
North Restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island, is raising its prices for some good causes. Owner James Mark explains on his Tumblr that the eclectic American spot, which sells oysters, country hams, $120 seafood platters and $14 ramen bowls, has hiked most of its prices by $1.
The reasons for the increase are simple: so that 50 cents from the sale of each menu item will go to a local food-based charity (similar to the Mission Chinese Way), and so that Mark can pay his staff a fair wage and provide health insurance amid rising food costs.
We’re calling this restaurant a #BUY and a #GOOD DEAL. Click through to read about the hike in Mark’s own words.
You know you’ve had dinner at Masa, America’s most expensive restaurant, when your credit card company sends you a fraud alert. Shout out to Next Food Network Star & Do or Dine chef Justin Warner for tweeting us this screenshot. Dinner for two at the sushi spot, after tax & 20% tip, starts at $1,160. So all things considered, Mr. Warner got off pretty easy.
This three-bite, $17 caviar toast is a SELL.
Here’s the problem: the price is not quite high enough for black roe.
Allow drink tabs to be transferred, so when hosts dole out tables 35 minutes past the reservation time, guests don’t have to flag down the bartender to close out. Meals that cost more than $150 per person should be effortless. This is not effortless. This is work.
Our sister site, The Bad Deal, has some advice on how to fix what’s wrong at the Arlington Club, the subject of Ryan Sutton’s half-star Bloomberg News review. (Editor’s Note: the author of this post is also Ryan Sutton. How convenient).
PRICE GOUGING: DC Cabs Can Legally Add $15 "Hurricane Sandy Surcharge" to Fare
The ridiculous emergency fee is set to expire at noon on Tuesday, the Associated Press reports. This surcharge, of course, is in addition to the metered fare.
We at The Price Hike try to remain fairly even-handed about such developments. But since our editor Ryan Sutton, once, as a young waiter in a snowy Washington, only netted about $2 after a slow lunch shift thanks to the emergency fees charged by DC cabs, we’re gonna call this move a SELL and a BAD DEAL. This is a time we should all be helping each other out, not ripping each other off.
Our Sister site The Bad Deal is doing the TRUFFLE SHUFFLE as well!
Lincoln Ristorante in Manhattan is holding a $285 white & black truffle dinner, as first reported by Eater, and it appears to be a GOOD DEAL.
It’s a prepaid meal. Yeah, the prices on the drop down menu are pretty scary: $570 for two, $1,140 for four and it goes up from there. But here’s the thing; Chef Jonathan Benno and the good people at Lincoln were courteous enough to espouse REAL COST pricing, which means those numbers include tax, tip and wine pairings.
So what you see is what you get. And considering that truffle tasting menus can run you $300 at Babbo or $420 at Guy Savoy in Vegas, before tax, tip or wine, this appears to be a pretty reasonable entry-level price point. Yup, we’re gonna say this one is most probably a GOOD DEAL! It all takes place on 12 November 2012.
RELATED: The Bad Deal isn’t just about daily deals anymore.
New York City’s BIG SODA BAN, set to go into effect next year, is supposed to help fight obesity. So we commend the week-old Barclays Center, the home of the Nets, for complying with the law well in advance, capping the sizes of sugary drinks at 16 ounces. But here’s the problem: Soda is now cheaper than water at the new stadium. So guests now have an economic incentive to buy the less healthy option. Yeah, we’re calling this one a BAD DEAL.
When Meadowood Charges $1315 for Dinner & Lodging They're Giving You a Discount
Just a friendly message from our snarky sister site, The Bad Deal.
Dear Zagat: I’m sure you can find at least one restaurant in New York, right?
Dear New Yorkers: Rest assured, there are still restaurants in New York.
