20 course meal

[tony h]

The 20 course meal you lovingly described in the Cooks Tour - just how expensive was it (please don't tell me it was gratis)?  

Don't you think 20 courses is just a little over the top - I mean how do you stay intersted for that long - or is the food that good?

[bourdain]

The food WAS that good--the portions small. Admittedly, I hit a wall around the cheese course-what with aaall the wine..but focussed and made it through, tasting everything.  It was still a big meal which I fasted for 36 hours before tackling. But it's so well thought through it never ceased to keep the table intensely interested--each course a happy, much anticipated surprise. As far as price? No idea--especially with all the wines. The TV production company paid--and I believe Keller was very nice to us. I will say that for what we had, anything up to say..1500 a person we would have paid without blinking. Almost no price would have been inappropriate. I mean, how much is a designer jacket? Knicks tickets courtside for ONE game? A freaking Prada bag? (not that I'd pony up for any of those--okay maybe a jacket) Compared to a meal I will remember forever--and is probably unreproducable at any other restaurant in the world? I'd blow a months rent and crawl across broken glass in a hot second.