Many people consider Per Se the best restaurant in Manhattan, here are some trade-offs:
The single most caloric menu item was the foie gras, weighing in at
435.4 calories; followed by café Liégeois (basically a gourmet brownie
with ice cream), with 185.8 calories. The single least caloric was the
buttermilk sorbet, owing in part to its spoon-size portion (23
calories). All told, the nine courses tallied 1,230.8 calories, 59.7
grams of fat, and 101.7 grams of carbs. The total rises to 2,416.2
calories, 107.8 grams of fat, and 203.7 grams of carbs if you include
the extras: a salmon amuse-bouche, wine, dinner rolls with
butter, and chocolate candies. These might not seem like giant numbers,
but that one lunch has 60 percent more fat than the average adult, on a
2,000-calorie regimen, should eat in a day, according to the FDA. To
work off that meal, a 155-pound person would have to walk the route of
the New York City Marathon, plus an additional five miles. Or he could
swim round-trip from Battery Park to the Statue of Liberty nearly three
times, or do basic yoga for 13 hours and 42 minutes. It’s also roughly
equal in calories to six slices of DiFara‘s cheese pizza, ten Gray’s Papaya‘s hot dogs, or, it seems appropriate to note, four and a half Big Macs.
If we can assume linearity, this $250 meal (plus wine and tax and tip) costs you about $9 worth of health. In other words, don’t worry about it. Here is more, via Jason Kottke.
Of course, depending on your economic position, the biggest trade-off is the price: $250 a head, plus wine, tax, tip. Yowser! Luckily, there is an alternative. Keller has a relatively un-advertised restaurant in Yountville called Ad Hoc, where you can take advantage of Keller’s access to the finest foods and incredible apprentices in an informal atmosphere for $45 a head three course meal. Who needs nine courses? Probably a lot less calories, too. Highly recommended.
The $9 number is based on an average person’s value of life/quality of life. For someone who consumes $250 lunches, that number is a whole lot higher, since his value of life is much higher. My rough guess (and someone can check that) would be that for a representative client of Per Se, the health cost of this meal would be approximately equal to the monetary cost.
Like “Milk For Free” mentioned, the supposed 30-mile necessary walk is a good example of NOT thinking at the margin. A better question is: how much more exercise is necessary to stay at health and weight equilibrium with the Per Se lunch instead of the “average” lunch (whatever that may be)?
Why must every pleasure be tainted by the consequence police? O for the days of Diamond Jim Brady!
Surely if you’re rich enough to go to that restaurant, your health is worth more than the average person’s?
I’ve never been to Per Se (and at $250 per person it’ll be a cold day in hell before I go there), but somehow I just know that most of the customers are fashionably trim.
For those who are fretting about the cost of per se, you really don’t have to worry about. You may as well res at Dorsia tonight at say 8:00, or, 8:30.
Comments on this entry are closed.