ADNY (Alain Ducasse @ Essex House)

[jbraynolds]

I can't name a single restaurant in the country (or in Europe...even Veyrat) that has the wine mark-ups that Ducasse takes at AD/NY. The closest that I can name in the obscene-beyond-belief category is Mon Ami Gabi at The Paris in Las Vegas, where they sell a $7.00 bottle (wholesale cost) Echelon Pinot Noir for $56.00. And this was a hot topic in the industry (my industry, by the way) when they sprang it. 8 times? That's all they can do? What a bunch of pikers. You can't accuse Ducasse of taking a back seat, that's for sure.

I'm puzzled by the Arpege story as I've found good choices in Champagne, whites and reds for under 100 Euros for full bottles. Maybe things have changed, as they do.

[project]

Uh, it's been a while since I was trying to eat some of the best food in the world, but reading what Schneier ate at ADNY and comparing with what I ate the last dozen or so times I went to Harrald's about 60 miles north of Wall Street, sorry, but I can't think much of ADNY.

For people new to expensive US food, long one of the best restaurant rating sources was the 'Mobil Oil Travel Guide'. Their top rating was five stars. Each year, maybe fewer than 10 restaurants in all the US got five stars. The last time I was at Harrald's, they had gotten five stars from Mobil for 14 years in a row. Nothing in Manhattan was even close. In all of the US, Harrald's was second to a French restaurant in Cincinnati which had gotten five stars for 22 years in a row.

The wines Schneier got shocked me: In my first trip to Harrald's, I glanced at the wine list and for the appetizer ordered a bottle of Meursault. No way was I going to drink the whole bottle, but I really do like Meursault, they didn't have a half bottle, and Meursault is one of the best white wines in Burgundy, in France, and the world -- for people that like dry, clean, crisp.

Harrald talked me out of the full bottle and explained his house white wine to me in great detail. He brought the bottle to the table so I could check all the particulars including estate bottled, 'Appellation Controllee', in Macon, etc. It had been imported by Neal Rosenthal's Mad Rose Group (for people that know that amazing story). It wasn't Meursault, but it was terrific -- for anything so near to Macon it was about as good as anyone could ever hope. The location was a little NW of the town and, thus, just from a map may have been LaRoche Vineuse. That wine became one of my favorite whites.

For a red, I got a half bottle of a 1985 Morey St. Denis, another Rosenthal effort. Chambertin, Richebourg, Echezeaux, La Tache -- try to keep up, guys!

There was excellent hot French bread and a terrific cheese course.

The food -- it was more amazing than the wine.

The appetizer I got was a pate, terrific flavors, still quite low in fat, with Cumberland sauce. While the Cumberland sauce was classic, the pate was original and current.

E.g., for the fresh fish, when customers placed their order, the fish were still swimming in the pool with a roof over it out front, and the kitchen staff would walk with a fish net from the kitchen door past the front entrance of the restaurant to the pool, get the fish, walk back -- a good show for any arriving customers! We're talking fresh fish!

The live fish were delivered daily. I believe that the extras were taken home each night and smoked; their own smoked trout were served as one of their terrific appetizers.

Over time, I tried nearly all their appetizers and all their entrees that would go with their Morey St. Denis 1985 halfs, of which I drank the last one.

For Schneier's experience at ADNY, the desserts sounded good, and the brioche was cute, but otherwise sounded like strange cases of this with that that would have left me disappointed.

Of course, we should occasionally go to a place like ADNY and for two reasons, first to remind ourselves of how much we should appreciate Escoffier and second to discourage them from inventing anymore.

Gee, I'm sure that there are some good examples of Vin du Pays, but I've never bought one at a wine shop, never drank one at a French restaurant from a bistro to a top quality place, and, really, don't think I ever drank a glass of it.

Uh, for a dessert wine, maybe ADNY will carry a Greek Muscat?

And, I believe I can help out ADNY -- in the bathtub of my guest bathroom, last night was a very good year!

[Pan]

project: Thanks for your post, which was interesting.

I don't know what you meant here, though:

I believe I can help out ADNY -- in the bathtub of my guest bathroom, last night was a very good year!

The other thing I noted is that you compared actual dining experiences of yours with a report from Schneier. It's hard to really know how you would compare the two places if you actually had dined at both. Ditto for Schneier: I am guessing he hasn't been to Harrald's. Which town is it in, by the way?

[Louisa Chu]

There’s someone in the kitchen who can dice things into absolutely square sixteenth-of-an-inch cubes.  I wonder what he gets paid?

There’s someone in the kitchen that can make perfectly round balls out of cooked leaves.  I wonder what he gets paid?

Speaking from ADPA - for my ADNY brethern -

Yes.

Not enough.

Probably done by some unpaid stagiaire who's doing it for the letter of recommendation. Forget salary. He, or she, is probably figuring out how to hide the quarter round pieces of carrot and potato because he's been told they should all be perfect dice and there should be no waste. Okay, I exaggerate--a bit.

I remember the comment of one of my companions at our first meal at El Bulli. It went something along the lines of "that was some fucking labor intensive meal." Not so much at my meal at AD/NY, but at AD/PA there was a dish or two that may have had it beat on that level. If nothing else, Louisa will be well prepared.

Stagiaires get paid at ADPA - a nominal amount but that in and of itself is incredible. And now that I've been around to quite a few of the top kitchens, I almost hate to admit that stagiaires at ADPA are - relatively speaking in some ways - spoiled. And it's not just stagiaires - I was the last stagiaire ADPA will have for a while, they're not taking any more with the chef change - all cooks/chefs will do the tedious work. In fact, my heart almost stopped when the new chef - M. Moret ex of Spoon Paris - started seeding the raisins with me and my chef de partie. And we do it for more than just the CV - we do it because we're insane. And you try not to waste - there's always the stock. El Bulli - Albert Adria showed me a picture of a martini coupe of peeled pine nuts - I thought that was crazy - until at ADPA, we peeled walnuts.

There's a place with hot french bread and low-fat pate? Wow. I'll be right there.

[jbraynolds]

Sadly, Harrald is closing his restaurant in Stormville. Well-earned and deserved retirement awaits.

Maisonette, the restaurant in Cincinnati, is a different place now as well, thanks to the city's bad run of luck over the last few years as well as their attempt to accomodate changing tastes (they used to do "Continental", which basically doesn't exist any longer, for better or worse).

And, irony of ironies, I have been working for Rosenthal for twelve years now.

[project]

Pan:

For

"I believe I can help out ADNY -- in the bathtub of my guest bathroom, last night was a very good year!"

first, I was referring to the long US practice of using one's bathtub to make wine at home! US law permits an individual to make a considerable quantity! This practice is part of the origin of the expression 'homebrew' -- more appropriate for beer made at home, which is also legal. Second, the "last night was a very good year!" is borrowing from a related joke on the US TV series M*A*S*H where some US Army physicians in a field hospital used their knowledge of chemistry to make homebrew and often commented that 15 minutes ago, yesterday, or some such was a "very good year" (that being borrowed from pretentious discussions of wine vintage).

Homebrew has a well deserved reputation for some really low quality, but if ADNY wants to sell 'Vin du Pays', then my joke was to insinuate that they might also want to sell what I brewed in my bathtub last night! Of course, it has to be a joke because, while it is legal to make homebrew, it is not legal to sell it.

For

"The other thing I noted is that you compared actual dining experiences of yours with a report from Schneier. It's hard to really know how you would compare the two places if you actually had dined at both. Ditto for Schneier: I am guessing he hasn't been to Harrald's. Which town is it in, by the way?"

Yes, my visits to Harrald's were about 10 years ago. So, we're talking comparing my reading of Schneier's description of what he just ate with my memory of what I ate about 10 years ago. So, the comparison cannot be very persuasive. A good double blind test would be still better, but these are rarely part of comments on restaurants!

The most solid part of my comparison was just the wines: The two wines I mentioned were an especially good Macon and a Morey St. Denis, both from a top importer that took very special care in selection, some of the vinification, shipping, and handling, both wines certainly 'Appellation Controlee'. Those two wines I mentioned are among the crown jewels of the wine world, way up there in the list of "the last of the great old time flavors left to enjoy" or some such! First-cut, by the usual criteria of wines, recognized for decades around the world, from yachts to palaces to state dinners, nothing that Schneier had at ADNY is even in the same ballpark, hardly even belongs on the same wine list or in the same restaurant.

For the food, my most pointed comparison was the relatively classic, but still original and up to date, food of Harrald's versus the unusual combinations of ADNY. Some people do not look forward eagerly to unusual new combinations; I am one of those people.

I did omit a comparison of the precision of cutting: I can understand the effort required to make precise cubes of vegetables 1/16" on an edge. I guess I would start with a mandoline. But for the hot seafood appetizer at Harrald's, eventually I came to guess that they had resorted to essentially microscopic precision for some of the onion cutting as a way to get the desired surface area for aroma while minimizing the volume that would be eaten. My guess was that somehow they used a laboratory tool designed for making thin slices for microscope slides.

For some credibility for the quality of Harrald's I did offer some of the best evidence ever available for US restaurants -- their record of five stars from Mobil for 14 years in a row (for the last date I knew).

For Harrald's, I do not know their current status. It's been a long time. They were in semi-beautiful, quasi-elegant Stormville, NY. To get there, I drove north on the Taconic State Parkway (which runs from a little NW of White Plains north to a little SE of Albany), north of I-84, turned east on Route 52, passed under I-84, went past a rock quarry or cement factory, and their restaurant was on the right, south side of Route 52. They had converted a modest house.

My notes say that the owners were Harrald Boerger and Eva Durrschmidt. Harrald ran the dining room, and Eva ran the kitchen. They were extremely expert and serious. I believe that there was an article on their restaurant in 'The New York Times' on or about October 2nd, 1992.

[robert40]

I happen to have the New York Times article on Harralds as it was written by Bryan Miller and I have kept ever food related article from the Times sense 1990.

I dont know if Harralds is still open but it was one of the top restaurants in upstate N.Y. in the early 1990's.

[R Washburn]

I happen to have the New York Times article on Harralds as it was written by Bryan Miller and I have kept ever food related article from the Times sense 1990.

I dont know if Harralds is still open but it was one of the top restaurants in upstate N.Y. in the early 1990's.

It isn't listed as a 4 or feve star restaurant in the Mobil guide (2003) five stars:

Restuarants

ALAIN DUCASSE New York  NY 3 3

CHARLIE TROTTER'S Chicago   IL 9 9

THE DINING ROOM AT THE RITZ  CARLTON  Atlanta  GA  2 7

THE DINING ROOM AT THE RITZ  CARLTON San Francisco   CA 1 1

DINING ROOM AT WOODLANDS Summerville  SC 1 1

FRENCH LAUNDRY  Yountville   CA 6 6

GARY DANKO San Francisco   CA 5 5

TRIO  Evanston    IL 1 1

JEAN GEORGES New York  NY 6 6

LE BEC-FIN  Philadelphia  PA  2 22

MAISONETTE Cincinnati   OH 40 40

SEEGER'S Atlanta   GA 5 5

INN AT LITTLE WASHINGTON  Washington    VA 14 14

Looks like La Maisonette is the all time 5-star champ at 40 years with Le Bec-Fin a distant second.

[Felonius]

Let me preface by saying that I really, really like the food at ADNY. I've had some superb meals there. It's the pricing that makes me wince.

Fwiw, the total RETAIL (not the wholesale price that the restaurant pays) for full bottles of all five wines that were served is $125.00, which means that ADNY paid about $80.00. That's for the bottles, which would, realistically, serve seven to eight diners. So call their wine cost per head about, what, $12.00? Whoah. What was the price for the pairing? And, maybe another subject entirely, I wouldn't expect to be served a French VdP, an Italian white, a Long Island red, a Spanish red and a Croatian wine at one of the flagship restaurants of this most vaunted of FRENCH chefs. Maybe at Mix, but at ADNY????

I'm a fan of ADNY's food, but I completely agree with your comments on this wine pairing. $125 for this plonk?!?!?!? Ridiculous.

Most high end NYC restaurants get away with highway robbery when it comes to wine pricing. I realize they need to make a profit, but the current practice of 300 percent mark up on standard wines, and even more on anything that's a limited production wine, is in my opinion too high. When considering wine by the glass, the usual standard in NYC is that the restaurant will charge a 5-7x markup, so that one glass sold pays for the bottle.

Now we come to ADNY. I can't give you the exact pricing, but I am fairly certain this wine pairing was at least 10x mark up. Why should they get paid this kind of profit for supplying ordinary wines from humble origins? A Long Island pinot noir at a world-class french restaurant? Give me a break!

This recent review indicates to me that ADNY is serving A+ food with C wine pairings, and charging a similar price for both. Shame on them.

[jbraynolds]

You can look up the retail prices for the wines that were served by going to www.wine-searcher.com and poking around. The Alion skews things a bit as it retails in the high $40s while the other stuff is in the sub-$20 retail range. In some cases the barely-above $10 range. This is shameful and shameless.

[jbraynolds]

Good point: A (maybe A+) food, A+ setting/room, A+ service (best I've experienced in the U.S., perhaps), A+ paraphenalia (china, crystal, linens, etc.) and a low C to high D wine program. You should check out the prices on the trophy wines, like classed-growth Bordeaux and Grand Cru Burgundy, by the way. They make the other high-end French places in NYC look like Manducati's.

[Fat Guy]

This recent review indicates to me that ADNY is serving A+ food with C wine pairings, and charging a similar price for both.   Shame on them.

Felonius, I find myself in rare disagreement with you on this issue. Let me try to make a few points in the hopes of swaying you:

At the most fundamental level, ADNY has one of the best wine lists in the world. One of the 89 best, to be precise, if you use the Wine Spectator Grand Award system as a guide. ADNY received the Grand Award last year after three years in business; both of Ducasse's other fine-dining establishments also hold this designation. Not to rely on Wine Spectator, I personally think it's a great list. Conveniently, it's online for anyone to read: ADNY wine list. Most of the wines are of course totally outside my budget, but I enjoy a list like this one that's rich in verticals and full of interesting choices.

Ducasse's proffer from the beginning was that ADNY was not going to be classically French but would, rather, embrace the New World and aim for internationalism and modernity in both cuisine and wine. Thus the American, Italian, and Spanish sections of the list are quite large -- perhaps as much as a third of the list. There are also, not listed, a number of Southern Hemisphere wines in inventory (the unlisted wines of ADNY is a whole 'nother thread).

So I don't think there's any issue of the quality of the wines available at ADNY, nor do I think there's any valid objection to the list based on ADNY being French and some wines being not-French.

In terms of the high markup, I think that argument kind of misses the point. It seems obvious to me that, if any restaurant is going to have the highest markup, ADNY is going to be the one. Here's a deep, Grand Award-level, world-class wine list -- millions of dollars in inventory -- on call for 65 or however many people a night, dinner only, six nights a week, a single sitting, presided over by a disproportionately large wine staff, served in the finest hand-blown crystal you'll find in any restaurant, etc. Which isn't to say I embrace the notion that all these high costs justify the markups we see in restaurants today. But if we're going to accept a universe in which four-star restaurants in New York charge $X for wines, then I have no problem accepting it when ADNY charges $2X for those same wines. I see no other way for the restaurant to do business. Perhaps at a bigger operation, I might argue that lowering prices might increase wine sales volume, but that's just not going to happen at ADNY where every potential wine-buying customer is already drinking. In other words, I think those who complain about the ADNY wine list prices are making exactly the same logical misstep as those who complain abou the food prices. I understand it's harder to come to terms with this on the wine side because the restaurant doesn't cook the wine, but it's not about what's in the bottle -- it's about the overall business model, the carrying cost of the inventory, the staff, the size of the restaurant, the lack of table turns, etc. It's just another way in which ADNY gets singled out and attacked for being the best.

Now, what about these crap-ass wines that Bruce got served? I think in order to understand that situation one needs to step back and ask what ADNY is all about. ADNY is a restaurant for rich people. Very rich people. Yes, anybody willing to shell out the $150 per person plus tax and tip (in other words, $400 for two people just for the most basic food menu, tap water, no coffee) is allowed to eat there -- it's not a private club and you don't have to provide proof of your wealth to be admitted. But fundamentally the restaurant was not conceptualized to serve the customer for whom a $400 tab for two is a big stretch. Rather, it's aimed at people who are going to order a couple of bottles of wine from the center of that wine list -- bottles in the $300 range. If most of the restaurant's customers don't do that, the restaurant goes out of business. If you're in there splitting a $125 pairing, you're essentially a money-losing table for ADNY. I'm glad the restaurant offers an option for people who want to spend only a small amount on wine but still want to enjoy wine with the meal. Really, the only other options are not to provide any wine below the $200 per bottle price point or to raise the food prices. But beyond that, complaining that ADNY serves cheap wine at high prices is like complaining about the price of popcorn at the movie theater: those of limited means should actually be grateful that the price of popcorn is so high, because it allows us to buy movie tickets for less than they'd have to cost if the popcorn cost 50 cents. At least we have a choice. In a similar vein, buying cheap wine at ADNY and then complaining about the cost is similar to a scenario wherein you've just picked up your bespoke suit from Leonard Logsdail and, on the way out of the shop, you buy a couple of pair of decent-quality socks from the small selection on the table -- then you get upset that you paid $20 for a pair of socks that costs $3 at Century 21. Well, Len Logsdail isn't in the business of selling cheap socks. But he nonetheless knows that on occasion one of his customers will for whatever reason need some socks. So there they are.

Some people are offended by the mere idea of a restaurant for rich people. But once you get over that, the rest of it makes sense. And the nice thing is that ADNY has set itself in such a way as to allow middle-class people (like most of us on this thread) to get a taste of the wealthy person's fantasy experience at a somewhat approachable price. The staff knows when this is going on -- they know when I show up and order the cheapest bottle on the list,that they're dealing with someone outside the target audience, someone who doesn't represent a profit center for the restaurant. Yet they'll still treat me, or Bruce, or you, or anyone who eats there like royalty. That's what being a world-class establishment is about.

I'm also not nearly as offended as some seem to be by the wines in question. Not that I've had every one of them -- have those who are criticizing the choices, other than Bruce, tried every one of these wines? -- but I've had two of them and wouldn't in a million years characterize either as plonk. The Ferrer-Ribiere is a terrific wine -- it's on the list at several three-star restaurants in Europe I believe -- and I've had it a couple of times. It's exactly the kind of choice I'd want the restaurant to make for me within tight budgetary constraints. Likewise, I've had the Alion and I also think it's unassailable. As for the other three, I don't know. Maybe they sucked. They shouldn't have, and they should at least have been well paired. But I'd want to hear the sommelier's argument before dismissing those wines or those pairings out of hand. I've found the wine director at ADNY to be extremely talented and sophisticated about wine pairings, and I've learned quite a bit in my conversations with him. I'm not ready to write off a wine just because it's from Long Island -- I'd need to taste and try to understand. And, if at the end of the night I still thought the wine sucked, I'd say so and I bet their response would be to remove the whole wine pairing fee from the bill.

[Mark Sommelier]

Steven,

In my opinion, even rich people can see when something is a bad value. I sell Dom Perignon 1995 for $175, at Veritas DP 1990 is $250, at ADNY it is $420. I sell Corton Charlemagne, J-F Coche-Dury for $500, at ADNY it is $1200and at Veritas it is an astonishing $1300. Assuming rich people drink those wines all the time, don't you think they would notice these considerably higher markups than anywhere else they eat? Just curious.

[Bux]

I'm puzzled by the Arpege story as I've found good choices in Champagne, whites and reds for under 100 Euros for full bottles. Maybe things have changed, as they do.

There actually was a fair selection of full bottles under $100. We had a Sancerre for 88 euros and there was a selection of Loires and other wines for less than that. I was just a bit shocked not to find a half bottle of red under 100 euros, although I was looking for something closer to 75 euros and thought 22 euros a bit steep for the glasses we had. Water and coffee was probably less expensive than in a top NY place (I rarely drink bottled water in NY and usually do in Europe, habits die hard.) Beverages--one bottle plus two glasses of wine, one bottle of sparkling water and two espressos--amounted to no more than 20% of the total tab, which is, I think, low. To borrow a phrase, perhaps I should say "Sorry. Overstated."

In fact, there were plenty of full bottles of red that were less expensive than the half bottles, but I really didn't want to finish a bottle and I hate to leave over as much as a half bottle of wine. It was an expensive meal, but I speak highly of the food. There was a single sore spot that sticks in my mind, but didn't spoil my evening. Next time I'll see we start a red wine earlier in the meal.

PS, having read further down the thread and taken a detour to the AD/NY wine list, I take it all back and thank Alain Passard for his very reasonable wine list. At $22 a glass, I almost feel as if I drank there on a scholarship.

[Bux]

For people new to expensive US food, long one of the best restaurant rating sources was the 'Mobil Oil Travel Guide'. Their top rating was five stars.  Each year, maybe fewer than 10 restaurants in all the US got five stars.  The last time I was at Harrald's, they had gotten five stars from Mobil for 14 years in a row.  Nothing in Manhattan was even close.  In all of the US, Harrald's was second to a French restaurant in Cincinnati which had gotten five stars for 22 years in a row.

The Mobil guides have always been a bit suspect in my mind. There was a recent thread on eGullet discussing the latest ratings. While unconvincing within areas I knew, they were wildly inconsitent from region to region. It very much seemed to me that they were the result of a dedicated bureaucrats working off a corporate checklist and not the opinions of critics with educated palates. Comments made on the thread citing some of the guidelines, seemed to support this view. Cincinnatti is a good example. While I've never been there, an associate with a trusted palate who dined at the five star restaurant and reported that it couldn't hold a candle to the top places in NYC. It had the style of a fine French restaurant, but not the substance.

The serving of any wine isn't really shocking unless one has tasted the wine. Your own comments suggest a Macon Blanc can compete with a Mersault, but I find Bruce's comments on the wine to be fair. I've rarely found wine pairings represent good value except when I've been recognized as a friend of the house. Wine pairing can be very subjective and I appreciate a sommelier's attempt to make an unusual one for me, if he honestly believes it's an interesting one. Nevertheless, for Bruce, the weakness in the pairings at AD/NY was in having two out of four wines not pair well with the food and the price. A couple of weeks ago, I was comped dessert wines at two different restaurants. Sadly they didn't support the desserts we had all that well. Fortunately they were delivered before the desserts arrived and we were able to enjoy them by themselves. Good pairings improve the food, bad pairings can actually detract.

Maisonette, the restaurant in Cincinnati, is a different place now as well, thanks to the city's bad run of luck over the last few years as well as their attempt to accommodate changing tastes (they used to do "Continental", which basically doesn't exist any longer, for better or worse).

And it still has five stars. "Continental," if I may be so bold, doesn't support the image of five star food for me either. This post doesn't help convince me that Mobil is reliable at the level of Ducasse food, although I believe AD/NY has five stars. The service and style of AD/NY does set it apart in NY as do the wine mark ups.

[Bux]

And we do it for more than just the CV - we do it because we're insane.

I was being a bit facetious, as well as covering for your mental condition.

[Fat Guy]

Steven,

In my opinion, even rich people can see when something is a bad value. I sell Dom Perignon 1995 for $175, at Veritas DP 1990 is $250, at ADNY it is $420. I sell Corton Charlemagne, J-F Coche-Dury for $500, at ADNY it is $1200and at Veritas it is an astonishing $1300. Assuming rich people drink those wines all the time, don't you think they would notice these considerably higher markups than anywhere else they eat? Just curious.

I don't think anybody is trying to prevent them from noticing.

[Felonius]

Steven, I agree with many of your points. Certainly I agree that ADNY has a first-rate wine program and an excellent list.

I still think it is highway robbery to charge $125 for $15 worth of wine. It's one thing to pay a premium for something rare or limited-production, i.e. a Chateau Grillet or bottle of Le Montrachet. It's another to be paying $25 for a glass of mediocre wine produced in large quantities that wholesales for the equivalent of $2 per glass. I find this insulting.

Also, ADNY doesn't charge double the price for their food than their competitors, despite the fact that it is their unique creation, so why should they be able to charge double the markup for wines that can be found in many other places? (I'm speaking of these wine pairing choices, not of the larger list which has some unique selections).

I understand your "popcorn theory" and is has its merits. I know that most diners at ADNY can afford to pay whatever they like for a bottle of wine. Still, this doesn't make it right in my mind for them to markup wines by the glass by something like 12x.

[Fat Guy]

Felonius, if I didn't think it silly to get hung up on the number, I'd pursue some of the mathematical assumptions here. For example are you working with the above-stated theory of 7-8 pours from a bottle? That's not the denominator on my home planet. But ultimately the reason the factor isn't important at the low end is that it ignores the higher fixed costs. For example if we have a glass of wine with wine cost of $2 and restaurant X has fixed costs of $2 and sells the wine for $6, the markup is 300% and the profit is $2. If restaurant Y sells that same wine for $14 and has fixed costs of $10, we're still looking at a $2 profit but the markup is 700%. Yet if that restaurant sold the glass for $6 it would suffer a $6 loss. I'm sure ADNY has extremely high apparent markup percentages at the low end and I'm sure ADNY has extremely high fixed costs. I don't know that we're talking about 1200% or 1400% but if we are it's not particularly relevant. Once you get into the heart of the list the percentage markups fall closer to the range of normal overpriced multi-star Grand Award-type establishments. The highest part of the range, to be sure. But as in Mark's example above, you can find wines at ADNY that are priced lower than the same wines at Veritas. This most likely has to do with how and when the wine was acquired.

[Felonius]

I'd assume 5 glasses per bottle, not 7 or 8. I'm with you on fixed costs as well. I can't believe that ADNY makes money at all, and I suspect it is probably subsidized by some of his other operations, or perhaps the hotel. They just don't do enough volume to cover an immense amount of overhead. So in the end you are right that they probably have to charge this kind of markup.

I still think it's a bit absurd for ADNY to be charging $20-25 dollars for a glass of wine, that Daniel or Jean Georges would sell for $10-12 based on their usual (and very steep) 5x mark up over retail. The wine tastes the same in the glass at ADNY as it does anywhere else. They might as well go ahead and charge $250 for the basic menu. I would perceive that as making more sense, though I suspect it wouldn't to others.

Fat Guy you win, but I still get mad at paying so much for basic table wines.

[jbraynolds]

The 7-8 pours per bottle assumes, obviously, a 3-3.5 ounce pour. That's standard. Any more is overfilling the glass, which a restaurant like AD/NY wouldn't do. And they don't give out re-fills. For dessert wines, assuming they're using the industry luxury-standard Riedel glasses, the pours are more like 2 ounces. By the way, the worst recent shafting on wine-pairing I've ever suffered was a couple of months ago at Seeger's, in Atlanta. 4 glasses, two of them sweet wines (a Ste. Croix du Mont for the foie gras terrine starter, a Muscat Beaumes de Venise for the apple beignet dessert). So I got a total of about 10 ounces of wine for $50.

[Fat Guy]

I'll eat my hat if the pours (on the non-dessert wines) are less than 5.5-6 ounces. And at top-level restaurants my understanding is that they usually get 4 pours from a bottle. At most places at this level, they'll also let you taste the by-the-glass selections, and there are various other instances of waste (and, indeed, if they like you they may very well top off your glass gratis). But we should check this with Mark Sommelier -- he could tell us the exact size of pours at this range of restaurant.

ADNY by the way does not use standard Riedel or Spiegelau. The stems at ADNY are individually crafted by Jean-Claude Novaro, a glassblower from Biot (South of France, near Nice). It's little touches like this that put ADNY so firmly in its own category. Even at Mix and the Spoon restaurants, however, I believe they work with their own stemware producer (in Hungary, I'm pretty sure).

[FoodMan]

They suggested that one of us order a la carte when we both ordered the tasting menu--so we could try more dishes--even though the suggestion resulted in fewer courses overall and a cheaper bill. I’m so used to restaurants that require everyone at the table to order the tasting menu that I didn’t even ask. When we asked to split a wine paring, they offered to pour it in two different glasses.

That is very nice of them. I was wondering how was everything served? Did they incorporate the a la carte items as part of the tasting menu? and served you both one dish at a time? or did they serve you the tasting menu and your companion the a la carte?

Thanks for the review.

Elie

[R Washburn]

I think Steven is right, you can't expect a fixed percentage mark up at a restaurant like ADNY. A more viable formula would be: fixed service charge + % markup.

[robyn]

OK - let me add my opinions about liquor at ADNY - even though I know much less about wine than most people here.

Let me start by saying that I can't drink most wines these days for medical reasons (no big whites - and no reds at all) - and I can't drink much of the ones I can drink. But I do like to drink. So I drink cocktails (remember those?) most of the time.

At AD - it was impossible to pass up the preliminary glass of champagne. I seem to recall there were 2 - one was about $20 - the other was perhaps $25. We had 2 glasses of the more expensive one on the basis of a staff recommendation. Two thumbs up.

My husband does drink wine. Faced with the staggering array of wines we knew absolutely nothing about - he told the staff about what he was looking for to go with what he had ordered - his approximate price range - and he asked for a wine that I might be able to share a little with him. What arrived was a stunning dry riesling that went perfectly with the food. I think it was about $140 for the bottle. No need to quibble about whether the bottle had 3 or 4 or 8 glasses in it. I drank about 1/4 and my husband drank the rest. I have no idea whether this wine was marked up 2X or 10X. And I don't much care. On that particular evening - I was paying a restaurant to stock a million wines - to have staff that knew the inventory and understood how to pair a customer's wants with what the restaurant had to offer - and to serve what was chosen appropriately. Based on these expectations -again two thumbs up.

(I will compare this with another experience at Jean Georges. We did the same thing. Wound up with a similarly priced bottle of a white wine that I can only describe as "weird". It wasn't turned - or corky - it was just weird. We didn't like it - and I wonder if the person who recommended it had ever tasted it.)

I did have a few cocktails with my meal. Beefeater and tonic (which I drink all the time). The prices were certainly in line with those at other places in New York - and the drink was fine (bottled tonic - one would expect that at all high end restaurants but frequently you get stuff out of a gun).

My husband had a relatively modest after dinner drink (cognac) which he enjoyed. Seem to recall that it was about $25.

So I guess we spent about $250 on liquor overall. I really hadn't thought about what we'd be spending ahead of time - on liquor - or food - because we were last minute walk-ins (didn't have a reservation). But afterwards - we thought the total was appropriate. We certainly didn't have any complaints.

By the way - for people who simply hate paying large markups for wine - just order liquor. It's a heck of a lot cheaper - and there are enough drinks around to satisfy just about any type of taste. Robyn

P.S. "Weird" didn't seem enough to describe the Jean Georges wine. The closest thing I had ever tasted like it was retsina (but it wasn't retsina).

Edited January 22, 2004 by robyn (log)