I have grumbled for some time about the increasingly obscene pricing of wine in many restaurants. Of course you are not compelled to purchase wine. But, dine out without wine? I'd rather eat at home where the food is always better and so, usually, is the wine!
I have on occasion grumbled, but I now feel I must speak out. No doubt restauranteurs are doing nothing more than producers of "trophy wines" are doing - keep raising the prices until you strike resistance. The price has nothing to do with cost, only with what the market will bear. There has to be something about a restaurant environment and our current prosperity that beclouds judgment. I am not talking about expense account dining with wines at $100 a bottle and up. I am talking about dining in the average "good" restaurant where main dishes go for $18 to $28 and the average tab is $30 to $40 per person without wine. When I am asked to pay $24 a bottle for a mediocre wine that I know cost the restauranteur $5, and I am expected to pay another $4 in the tip, I am offended - no, outraged! And I am sure that the average diner has some idea of the retail cost of the wine on a restaurant wine list - that he can buy that $24 bottle for $7.99 or less. I have come to accept paying 3 times cost in a restaurant - but nearly five times - No! And that says nothing about the quality of the wine list which all too often is abysmal. The argument that wine profits are necessary to offset the cost of food is nonsense - food is the smallest item of restaurant costs. Also ridiculous is the argument made in a NY Times article by one NY restauranteur that he needed those kind of profits to cover the cost of glasses, both washing and breakage, and the cost of service.
Wine-loving Diners - to the Ramparts! How you protest is up to you. My choice is to let them know that I will not be back and why.
But, here is a ray of sunshine - we eat out every Saturday night on our way home,
and we have gravitated to restaurants closer to home, among them Applausi in Old Greenwich and Cafe Meze on Central
Avenue in Hartsdale, NY - minutes from home. Both have great food, excellent service and decent wine lists. Last
Saturday, at Cafe Meze, Mark Fillipo, the chef, who knows we are in the wine business, came out of the kitchen,
as he often does, to chat with us. We commented favorably on the Spanish wine we were sipping and he said "Please
feel free to bring your own wine, any time, and I will not even charge you corkage!"