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The Priciest Fish Shack in Manhattan

Pete Wells's delicious take down of a ridiculously expensive restaurant
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Pete Wells, the restaurant critic of The New York Times, socks it to a restaurant that deserves socking it to. Oh boy oh boy. Excerpts:

Now three months old, Kappo Masa is not the most expensive restaurant in New York. That distinction belongs to Mr. Takayama’s home base, Masa, in the Time Warner Center. (Price of dinner for one before tax, tip and drinks: $450.) Still, it is expensive in a way that’s hard to forget either during or after the meal. The cost of eating at Kappo Masa is so brutally, illogically, relentlessly high, and so out of proportion to any pleasure you may get, that large numbers start to seem like uninvited and poorly behaved guests at the table.

Price of a maki roll of chopped fatty tuna wrapped in rice with caviar piled on each of the eight pieces: $240. I could never bring myself to order it, or two dishes filigreed with white truffles: the fried rice with mushrooms ($120) or the Ohmi beef tataki ($150). So I can’t tell you how any of them taste, but I can tell you that by the time I spotted something for less than $80, it struck me as a steal.

Amount I spent for 5.5 ounces of grilled steak raised in Australia: $78.

The beef had a species of tenderness that I associate more with bluefin tuna than steak. It tasted something like teriyaki without the sugar. I liked it very much, but mostly I thought, “Why $78?”

In fact, Mr. Takayama charges similar prices across town at Bar Masa. But the food and service allow Bar Masa to pass for an à la carte version of Masa itself. Kappo Masa is nowhere near as good. The raw ingredients may well be the same, but they are often handled carelessly, seasoned indifferently and served inattentively.

And:

And yet if you are one of those people who suspects that Manhattan is being remade as a private playground for millionaires who either don’t mind spending hundreds of dollars for mediocrity or simply can’t tell the difference, Kappo Masa is not going to convince you that you’re wrong.

The final line is the killer. And it has probably slaughtered this restaurant. Sounds like a mercy killing, though I kind of hope it succeeds, because there’s something Schadenfreudishly pleasurable about people rich enough to eat at a place like this being separated from their money.

(Sorry for light posting today, folks. Had some unpleasantness over the holidays, and am undergoing a return bout of mono, for the first time in a year. I’m applying a strong dose of Dante to the stuff, and hope it will be brief.)

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