Fine Dining On A Budget. 5 Ways to Eat Well Without Spending it All.

“I’d eat beans and rice for a month in order to eat a meal like that!” -Restaurant Colleague. @Blackbird Restaurant, Chicago.

Dining out is like theater.

The justification of a fine dining experience comes from an appreciation of craftsmanship and storytelling through food. The fine dining restaurant is like an interactive stage where guests have the unique experience of participating in operatic-level theatrics.

High-end cutlery, precision in steps of service, and the reputation of a chef work in tandem to make a two-three hour tasting experience worth the ticket price.

The price for a tasting menu or à la carte option of this sort will set you back about $50-300/person all-in depending on location and restaurant. This is a hefty one-time price to pay for a few bites of food, and most people think they could never afford it.

I’m here to help you responsibly navigate your way to a fine dining table and not put the bank account in red.

5 ways to fine dine on a budget.
1. Plan Ahead

Enjoy tasting the fruits of your labor; Quality over quantity.

If we counted up our countless Starbucks lattes, Chipotle lunches and excess spending at the grocery store, it would add up to a tasting experience in no time.

Personally, I would rather enjoy a 150$ tasting menu once a month than buy coffee and eat lunch out 3X/week all month.

For convenience sake, we oftentimes eat quick, low-quality meals on the go during the work week. For example, the classic Chipotle lunch will be about 11$/visit, and if we did this three times a week for a month, we’d spend 132$/month. Add in a morning coffee on the way to work and that adds about 60$/month to the tab.

Most of the time, the quality and appreciation of these meals is clouded by convenience while our typical 40$/week groceries sit idle in our fridges and coffee machines at home.

Instead, opt to cook at home, drink coffee in bed in the morning or at the office and pocket the cash for a relaxing meal out with friends.

When eating well is a priority, you can plan ahead to incrementally save on lesser-quality meals and experiences in preparation for a fine meal.

2. Bring Lots of Friends Along

When dining à la carte, I typically want to order everything on the menu.

With a few friends along for the ride, you can!

Psychologically speaking, there’s something super fulfilling about sharing a table full of food.

Between three people, 5-6 small plates at an average 15-20$/each feels substantial and also leaves room for couple desserts as well. Throw in a nice bottle of wine and split it three ways for a fun evening.

3. Make Friends With Your Server

Treat your servers well, and they will treat you well. You never know when they could send an extra amuse-bouche to your table, slip putting an extra round on your tab, or send out free dessert.

Tip AT LEAST 20% across the board.

4. Go Sober Curious

Eater has starting publishing maps with the best places for spirit-free cocktails.

I recently enjoyed a few evenings at Kumiko, where the first few pages of the drink list are purely spirit free. In a recent interview with USA Today, Julia Momose of Kumiko’s beverage program says that “spirit-free is empowering: it denotes a choice, not a compromise. A spirit-free is any variety of stimulating non-alcoholic mixed drink made of diverse and distinct ingredients.”

Startups like Seedlip are making waves in the N/A world. Now, most respected tasting menus and high-end bars are offering innovative, spirit free cocktails using high-end mixers, juices, syrups, and shrubs.

Don’t knock it until you try it. Most spirit-free menus are competitively enticing in a better-for-you way.

It’ll also shave a few bucks off your bill.

5. Get Your Money’s Worth

The most important aspect of money-mindfulness when eating out is getting your money’s worth.

What does this mean, exactly?

Well, that same crappy 11$ Chipotle burrito could buy you an incredible first course at a well-respected restaurant.

Meanwhile, there’s nothing worse than signing a check for a meal with poor service, dirty cutlery, and/or sub-par food. Lucky, here in Chicago, we have some of the best, bulletproof restaurants around. Even then, when paying upwards of 100$/person for an evening, things must be done correctly. The stakes are high.

My Top Recommendation Per Quality and Approachability in Chicago’s Fine Scene:

Boka restaurant on Halsted. Get the tasting menu.

Stay tuned for restaurant reviews and where I think you should spend your time, company, and money.

Cheers.

Millennials Would Rather Buy Avo-Toast

Millennials are crazy about fancy food, but can we afford it?

According to “The Emerging Millennial Wealth Gap,” a recent report from the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank New America, millennials earn 20% less than baby boomers did at the same stage of life. We are less wealthy than our boomer elders were and we are spending more than ever on luxury goods.

Take, for instance, avocado toast.

This ultimate luxury breakfast food was coined in 2017 as the reason why millenials can’t afford homes.

This scapegoat food continues to get a bad rep even today. Most recently, I saw my favorite personal finance YouTuber’s take on avocado toast:

Graham is right: if we invested our daily $14.10 toast in a mutual fund with 7% interest and dividends reinvested, we’d have about 2.4 million dollars in 50 years.

Don’t kick yourself yet, though….

I love avocado toast, and I am also passionate about personal finance. After a night in the restaurant, I will relax to some ‘Tube and tinker with my finance excel sheet. I am diligent about investing, and I look forward to maxing my Roth every year and watching it grow.

This being said, I can’t seem to wrap my mind around how little guilt I feel when splurging on avocado toast, pour over coffee, and tasting menus.

Maybe it’s because I’m a restaurant industry professional.

Maybe it’s because I want to make food writing my career.

Maybe it’s because eating out is like theater.

Maybe it’s because I’d rather eat the damn toast than pay for a car.

Excuses aside, the reality is that I’d rather splurge on a theatrical night of entertainment than deal with the ongoing financial pressure of recurring costs from physical goods.

I value travel, free time, quality time with friends, and digging into culture through food.

And, above all else, I’d rather eat the avocado toast now AND invest my money than live like a hermit (sorry, Graham).

Avocado toast is a symbol of our times and it also reflects how our values have shifted as the result of technological, economic, and societal changes.

Let’s all take pictures of our 14$ avocado toast with our high quality micro-cameras, share them with friends on social media, and head off to the next destination.

Let’s also do this while keeping the savings account healthy.

Chicago Board Game Cafe Needs a Good Roll

Chicago’s Board Game Cafe definitely has new restaurant syndrome.

Slide into the comfy new seats and serve up a deck of cards with only a few slight chunks of dinner crusted on the side.

The concept reminds me of the 50’s, Betty Who themed drive-in in my hometown, where the board games inside would leave a residue that sticks to your fingers as you dipped your coated french-fries into the Heinz ketchup.

Although Chicago’s Board Game Cafe elevates any ideas you may have about this type of experience, its front of house needs a shuffle.

The interior design transports you to another world thanks to impeccable design and lighting. Twinkling lights, trees, and an indoor town square huddled around the bar make it feel quaint.

The energy from the staff isn’t the relaxed, confident air of a well-seasoned team, but rather hesitancy, like a freshman walking into a room full of upperclassman. Servers in training, board game teachers, and runners crisscross the stage, and we feel like the test subjects for a live-action restaurant prototype. With the restaurant having opened just last week, we understandably are.

The food menu is solid.

Offerings span continents, styles, and flavor profiles. The back of house is composed of some of the big guys in the industry: Aaron McKay of Schwa, NoMi, & Le Lan and Evan Behmer of Mercat a la Planxa and North Pond have created and executed a geographically expansive menu spanning offerings from Vietnam to Mexico to Spain.

We order bread, popcorn, and fries off the snack list. The server kept coming back, as if forgetting that we had ordered our small plates. When our fries arrive, we put in an order for two large plates, remind him of our bread and popcorn, and we deny another request to order more 10$ draft beers. Our mains arrive.

We figure our server is new and we pardon the mistake, moving on with our evening.

Each dish is well composed and executed. The flavors are balanced and the ingredients are handled correctly and plated beautifully.

“BÚN (GF) $14 Rice Noodles, Coconut, Pickled Vegetables, Sesame, Rau Thom. Working-class noodle dish from Vietnam with fresh herbs and dipping sauce. This is what Barack Obama had with Anthony Bourdain in Hanoi. Pick a few proteins to accompany the noodles. Do it for Barack.”

The cutlery is heavy and well-crafted.

We finish our board game and when I return to the table from the restroom my friends have gathered the check and are ready to depart. We all decide to head to Margie’s Candy right next door for their famous banana split.

As we pay, the server puts down three spoons and lets us know that a colleague of mine has two desserts ready to send out.

They’re amazing.

“SORBET RASPBERRY GALAGAL (GF, V*) $4 Galangal is like a spicy, floral ginger common in Thai and Vietnamese food.”
“CHOCOLATE NAMELAKA (GF) $10 Toasted Marshmallow Fluff, Cocoa Nib Brittle A big thing of chocolate. When we opened the cafe, we realized that we could buy specialty Ecuadorian chocolate that only gets sold to restaurants. So we did that and now you can eat it.”

The sweetness of the dessert fades when we head next door & realize we were charged for the two items that never arrived at our table.

It’s okay, the desserts were on the house, and the server will realize at the end of the shift and learn a lesson.

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Overall, I hope the FOH learns quickly and gives the experience to match the BOH talent. There’s a lot at stake with this risky business model, and execution and timing between the board game teachers and waitstaff needs to be flawless.

I’m hoping this concept sticks around.

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