My wife and I make okay money in a middle class area, but, due to a combination of good luck, and contrived to circumstances, we recently got to watch a college football game in the stadium’s super executive corporate sponsor level suite. It was awesome. Open bar, amazing catered food, and people networking all around me who are clearly in the c-suite of their respective companies. I had a list of crazy things I was going to say if someone asked me what I did, but it never came up.
My parents liked to travel and eat out when we were young. If traveling, it meant we ate with them. I frequently remember eating at very fancy places wearing my little dresses and patent leather shoes and feeling very out of place. But mostly because I was a kid.
Also maybe the one time we flew first class at 14? Oooo they had ice cream!! In real bowls!!! And nice pillows!!!
One of the events that comes to mind was a “open” conference at a university that “actively encouraged” “low class” participation. (They didn’t say this).
What I mean by that is that it happened during normal work hours and you had to send an email to sign up, but they did allow you to come.
Over the course of the event it became clear that it was a joint PR thing for the sponsors and the university to appear to be “doing something about [issue]”, so they had 2 talks, an audience participation thing, where it was very clear that the thing needed most was more funding for people and work material and tools (think PPE, it wasn’t that or that critical). …and a panel discussion between [company] and [5 politicians] that in absolutely no way addressed the issues that were brought up in the audience participation part.
There was very nice, expensive catering.
Pretty surreal experience and something that solidified my belief that some very important parts of our society are utterly broken beyond repair.
One time I went to the restaurant DAMON BAEHREL. I was informed afterwards that it had a 10-year waiting list and only seated 100 people a month. Despite having regularly commuted between the Midwest and the East Coast, getting there felt like the longest road trip I’ve ever taken since I had to go with my mother-in-law and some of it is on a gravel road.
I had to Google DAMON BAEHREL to spell it and I’m not going to bother retyping it.
It was far and away the most pretentious, absurd, cartoonishly fancy experience I’ve ever had, and I’ve dressed up in antique ceremonial Moroccan robes for a banquet at the art museum in the city I grew up in. At the art museum I sat next to the mayor’s mother in a room of 200 people conversely, about 30 people total could fit into DAMON BAEHREL.
I thought the art museum banquet was fancy, but when I was little I thought Boston Market and IBC root beer were fancy.
DAMON BAEHREL was the kind of place that serves a dozen ‘courses’ but each one is like one cracker one sliver of cheese and one spritz of condiment with maybe a sliver of sausage made from some bespoke farm animal. He insisted that the water we were drinking was actually unreduced tree sap. Everything was served on various slabs of wood some with the bark still on it. The slabs were so much larger than the food It looked like putting a coin on a serving platter for each course.
I just felt embarrassed every time I looked at the Damon and his staff. They had clearly heard his bullshit so many times that it was hard for them to feign credulity anymore.
Anyway, that shit was way too fancy for me. Clearly it was just wasted on me.
Yeah, but how was that food?
I just tried a fine dining restaurant for the first time this past weekend.
I was just curious after watching a bunch of cooking competitions on Netflix about how good that kind of food could be so decided to find a Michelin star restaurant and give it a try.
While the portions were small, the food was on another level. Even the “worst” of it was only that because it wasn’t amazing, but still really good.
The food was so good that when I got home and snacked that night, it was hard to enjoy any of my usual favorite snacks because it all felt so basic after that.
It was fancy in other regards, too. Like when my buddy went to the bathroom, someone came over and folded his cloth napkin rather than leave it bunched up on the table.
Plus, even though the portions were tiny and we joked about whether we’d need to stop for fast-food afterwards, by the end of the 9 or so courses, I felt completely satisfied. Even the snacking I mentioned was more due to the munchies than actual hunger.
It was expensive though. Two taster menu plus two drinks each came to about 500 CAD plus tip. And it was one of the cheaper options. There was a two Michelin star sushi place that advertised seats starting at 800 and I’m not even sure that includes any food, though I think it gets the “chef cooks what he wants” menu, which tbf would probably be way better than what I’d want anyways.
This place only needed to be booked like a month in advance, so the place you’re talking about sounds like it’s on another level itself. Though I’m curious how much that other level translates to better food.
Fine dining is one thing but the ultra exclusive, incredibly pretentious, top of the range place like DAMON BAEHREL is on another level entirely and has ceased, long ago, to be about making something a person wants to eat.
It’s about the art in just about the worst way possible. Fair play to the people who are into this but it’s complete bullshit, relies on borderline slave labour to produce and actively dislikes it’s audience.
I wanted to learn more and found this article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/29/damon-baehrel-the-most-exclusive-restaurant-in-america
Sounds like the ten year wait list might be made up and who knows where he gets his meats, but the whole thing just sounds fascinating. From his website, the current price is $550 USD a head, though it’s subject to change several times per week.
He sounds like one of those guys that has a whole bunch of little projects going on at any time and over the years accumulated enough results from those to host some volume of dinner parties. And possibly exaggerates or lies about some of them (though hard to say if he treats his cooking similarly to how he treats his legend/myth).
I’m convinced that Damon Baehrel is a semi-fake restaurant. Like, it’s real, but doesn’t actually take reservations or serve real guests, and the owner/chef lies about everything in order to seem more mysterious.
This article from 2016 lays out the case.
So I don’t think it’s a particularly good example of fine dining, as it’s doing a lot of things different from a normal restaurant that is open to members of the public.
Saved up for a few years to go to a 5 star hotel resort (thank you COVID!) and when we finally went, goodness gracious was the experience so wildly different from a 3 or 4 star hotel. Felt completely out of place there right from our arrival.
We arrived as backpackers and walk to main gate where the gatekeeper was. He was shocked and stammered “You… you walked here?”. We were quite naive in thinking everybody did since there was foot path, but upon looking back, it was not paved or anything. Nearly every visitor had their own car and there was a shuttle to get you between the bungalows. We also got a welcome cocktail and complementary snacks on some tours. We found out that we didn’t even have to carry our own luggage anywhere and of course there was dry-cleaning but it was at max 20$ / item.
A great experience, but we’ll need another few years to save up for a similar experience.
I was an active duty surgical tech in the US military; promoted fairly quickly and ranked up to Staff Sergeant at about 3 years. Shortly after taking that rank, we had a perfect storm of deployments, a retirement, a medical separation, etc that left me as the highest ranking enlisted in the surgery unit, which made me (a still-kinda-newby-surgical-tech) taking the responsibilities of basically a charge nurse. Chief among these was attending morning morning briefs with the top dogs of the hospital (high ranking officers) and giving report. Fortunately I knew where to access the OR’s metrics, so my report was always just a summary of our case load, average times, etc.
This lasted only about a week until we got a new Master Sergeant and Tech Sergeant. Apparently I got some pretty high praise from those top dogs for stepping up (not like I had a choice) and doing a decent job – but that was PURE luck lol. I only did well because things went relatively smoothly on their own. If there was an emergency or something I would have had no fucking clue what to do; and all the junior enlisted seemed to just know that I wouldn’t have been able to do shit for them during that time, so everyone kept the smaller fires to themselves during that time.
It was a weird time.
Similar. Two cases. First was taking charge of the entire Bases secure network upgrade because I was the only one who knew how the new devices worked. I ended up having to attend a meeting with a General and his staff and had to be chaperoned by an E5 because I was only an E3 at the time.
The second was my entire time working in White House Comms. Can’t talk much about it but I’m sure you can imagine how out of place it would feel.
Flew half-way across the country on a private plane for a business meeting.
The mayor used to know my name. Hollered at me at Mardi Gras!
Went to a party at the woman’s house who owns a vast chunk of downtown. Got to see the Mardi Gras parade from above.
I ate dinner in NYC at the penthouse fancy restaurant of some five star hotel. I could barely eat I was so intimidated. The food at that time was for some reason having a trend of “foams”, which is this weird thing where it was like lobster with a side of foamy stuff. I never understood how that was food, but the restaurant by itself was incredible.
A foam is just another texture of a sauce as a garnish, and typically not the main sauce. It’s not as “why was that even food” as people put on. It’s just an easy scapegoat for something different.
Cotton candy is air fluff that melts instantly on your tongue and leaves a bubblegum or artificial cherry taste behind. A foam is a similar thing, just with basil or truffle to compliment a piece of lamb sauced with its jus.
It’s just lazy commentary.
Also cuisine is art and at times creating new sensations is an excellent way of expressing that art. Other times not so much.
It wasn’t like a sauce. It was like a foam whipped with bits of lobster. Like lobster flavoured foam, it definitely wasn’t an accompaniment. I’m not describing it right, but it wasn’t like a side. It’s been like twenty years.
Not work related, but I used to do pickup games with the players on the best Tribes Ascend team in the world every day!
My older brother is a Tony Award winning producer and I took a trip to NYC ten years ago. His business partner is a former schoolteacher who became friends with a celebrity and got rich producing her stage plays.
Before going to NYC, I called them up and told them “Hey, I’m going to go see the Yankees while I’m there. There are $15 tickets in the outfield. Wanna go?” It was Jeter’s last year and I wanted to see him play live at Yankee Stadium. Their response was “Don’t worry, we’ll handle it.”
Handling it meant lunch at the stadium club, with Peyton Manning and a bunch of celebrities in the dining room and lobster piled higher than my head, literally. The most luxurious lunch I’ve had in my life. Then we rode the escalator down to our seats, through a tunnel lined with every free candy you can think of on both sides, to the second row behind the Yankee dugout, with our own dedicated server, who kept bringing us wonderful drinks. (TEN FEET AWAY FROM DEREK JETER) Then, in the third inning, another surprise: someone taps me on my shoulder holding one of the bases from batting practice, which my brother’s business partner purchased and had framed for me with my ticket and a photo.
That was too overwhelming. I couldn’t help but cry.
We went for another meal in the 7th inning. The food was still fresh and amazing.
The Yankees lost that day, but it’s okay.
I call it my ‘Make a Wish’ Day.
That’s hilarious, that you had to pretend you were dying of cancer for such extravagance to make sense in your life.
I think you misread what I wrote.
I call it my ‘Make a Wish’ Day.
you had to pretend you were dying of cancer
I don’t think he did. Just a joke.
I couldn’t help but cry.
Me neither friend. What a great story
It was the most overwhelming gift I have ever received.
And the thing is, his business partner does similar things for a lot of people. She never lost touch with being a wage earner and her understanding of being a non-wealthy person, and she loves spoiling people because of it. Just awesome.
I love to hear it
Wow, that’s a dream ballpark experience for a true fan. I feel glad for you. That’s really cool.
This is kinda lame but i feel like i would have zero apettite in that situation. I would just feel vaguely disgusted at the gluttony surrounding me thinking about all food that would be thrown away afterwards.
I would have felt pretty much the same way. And eaten the food anyway.
To each their own. For me it was a neat gift and a joyful experience.
Yeah im glad you could enjoy it. My brain is just wired wrong i think.
Yes, someone tells you a story about themselves and you just have to make it about you and shoehorn in some moral superiority
Are you a parrot?
Ya, but it’s REALLY important to that person that YOU know that they are morally superior to you.
Food waste is bad. In the US composting is becoming more popular. Even those a holes in Vegas are turning food waste into methane based fuel production. Covid started up a bunch of organizations doing second chance food distribution for food pantries. It’s hard in the US due to strict rules on food safety and lawsuit risk.
Imagine you change the script a little and it’s you getting a once in a lifetime unexpected VIP experience at your favorite venue to see your favorite celebrity/person. I think food waste might not be at the top of your concerns.
It’s been a long time since I read The Catcher in the Rye. A modern version of it would have Holden Caulfied somehow have this experience and be tormented by both sides of it, including your point of view. I’m not sure what he would do with the framed base and ticket afterwards.
Got an extra legroom seat in the airplane by chance.
These days I almost always buy that upgrade. I’m not tall or anything but for $50-100 extra it makes the flight so much more tolerable. That’s easy money on top of a $3000 vacation in my book.
And that’s how they get those fees. Effective, isn’t it.
Seat upgrades have been an uncharged for as long as I can remember. At least 30 years. I find it hard to believe they ever gave them away for free.
You bought coach, business, or first. Those were your upgrades from coach. There were no “tiers” in coach like coach “plus” or whatever extra legroom or no checked bag coach is called these days.
Seat pitch was the same for everyone.
They would charge more for window or aisle, that’s been a thing for a really long time.
They have always charged more for exit rows is what I’m saying. Premium economy is just a new tier.
Depends on the flight really. In your case I’d say yeah, it makes sense to upgrade; in my case I’m talking about a sub-1-hour flight that costs $60 in total without any upgrades. I’m on the taller side, but I’m still fine with a regular seat for such a short flight.
Never anything like that but my brother in law got tickets to a major league game close enough to see the umpires calls which is a big deal for me.
My aunt did hostile takeovers and her husband was even more rich. Their kitchen was bigger than my entire house. And that was their vacation house. I couldn’t appreciate most of it, I was just a kid. But I remember my cousin had a pool in his room.
pool in his room
Come on. You’re making this up, don’t you? Or are there really people who have a pool in their kids room?
Come on, that’s too wild.
I can’t imagine doing it as a parent. My kids drowning is a pretty big, realistic fear. Maybe for a teenager? Even then though…
Having seen how my buddy lives with his family being in the ~$100M net worth range and them overall being quite modest people, I’d 100% believe someone well above that and/or wanting to flaunt their wealth in a stupidly ostentatious manner would put a pool in their kid’s room.
Please tell us what your list of crazy things was. Lol
I was slightly intoxicated for large parts of the evening, but the one that jumps to mind is I was going to say I was the founder/CEO of a startup specializing in dog euthanasia to help reduce labor costs at kill shelters. We’re in talk to be bought out by Google right now.
The funny thing, is that my wife had just been laid off from the company she worked for that paid for this, but the tickets and travel were already paid for, so we just went anyway. It was beautiful, because there would have been zero ramifications for pissing off the entire room full of suits.
Ha! That’s awesome. Definitely should’ve leaned way into it.
TIL Google is in the market for dog euthanasia automation.
Prototype to be scaled up for people. /s
Nah bayer already has a solution. Alabama’s trying to find their own though
Meth?
Nitrogen chambers. Can’t waste good meth on people they don’t like
Business class flight to Japan. I’m just some engineer in a rural factory and was headed to some rural factories, but damn was the trip fancy. As we landed my coworker had to explain that the booze was free.
It was definitely a wild journey
Shouldn’t your coworker have told you that the drinks were free before you landed?
He had no idea I hadn’t flown like that before I mentioned I had to ask the stewardess the price of the food and drinks
My dad once told me how he won a bunch of money betting on a horse race and spent it all that night in the fancy suite type area that overlooked the racetrack.
