The Power Lunch Price Index!
La Tete D'Or debuts a $95 lunch. Plus: $53 lobster rolls at the Waldorf Astoria, $40 ham & cheese sandwiches at Cafe Boulud, and other high prices on the Power Lunch Index!!!
I’m working on a few splurge-y (and paywalled) reviews for later this weekend. In the meantime, enjoy the Power Lunch Index, and consider becoming a paid subscriber to access all our clutch dining intel
A renaissance for posh lunches?
Well, it’s September in New York.
So welcome back from The Hamptons, The Catskills, Cap-Ferrat, or that crazy indoor water park in East Rutherford where it’s “always 81 degrees,” (does anyone actually rent the cabanas there?).
I reckon you’ll be going back to the office as well. Sorry!
But at least you’ll eat well…if you make enough money! As big finance and tech firms continue with their return-to-office policies, more and more upscale Manhattan restaurants are giving lunch services a go.
Let’s start with Daniel Boulud’s La Tete d’Or, home to one of the city’s best prime ribs. It’s lunch program begins…tomorrow!
The very expensive steakhouse opened last year at One Madison. That location — a few floors below trillion-dollar asset manager Franklin Templeton — is key. Boulud’s meat palace will need well-heeled workers willing to spend $60 on a six-ounce skirt steak. Fries are extra. As is tax and tip. Quite a splurge for a meal at noon.
And Tete d’Or isn’t alone.
Cafe Boulud on the Upper East Side reopened for lunch the other week following a summer break. Lex Yard at the restored Waldorf Astoria (a nice $2 billion spiff-up) debuted the other month with lunch that includes a $53 lobster roll — topped with obvious luxuries like caviar, truffles, and trout roe (really, it should also come with a twenty dollar bill).
And Jean-Georges — where Mitt Romney famously and awkwardly feasted on frog legs with Trump in 2016 — re-launched its lunch service for the first time since COVID less than under a year ago.
Why is this happening? Just last month, Axios cited a report that New York office visits have surpassed pre-pandemic levels. Just the same, Manhattan office leasing surged in August, CNBC reported last week, Those are impressive stats, and they’re likely a product of JPMorgan, Goldman, Google and other big firms continuing to push RTO. Translation: More people showing up at the office means more potential customers for expensive restaurants during the day — the types of places that folks don’t visit while they’re typing away on their MacBooks in pajamas.
But here’s the thing: Just as rents are going up — along with so many other prices throughout the economy — so is your lunch bill.
Let’s take a closer look.
The Power Lunch Price Index, Part I
Scroll down for part deux
Here’s what you’ll end up paying for a fancy set menu at lunch throughout Manhattan. Quite a few of these places also offer a la carte. Most of the following offerings are for two or three courses, unless otherwise noted.
The Dynamo Room: $31, or $41 with steak
Hutong: $35
Cuerno: $37
Gui: $37
Avra Rock Center: $40
Naro: $39 (two courses), $48
Empellon Midtown: $45
Milos: $45
Fifty-Three: $58
Santi: $59 (two courses), $72
Fresco by Scotto: $67
Le Pavillion: $78 (two courses), $95
Le Coucou: $79 (two courses), $125
Gramercy Tavern: $80
Veau d’Or: $85
Aquavit: $80 (two courses), $95
Tete d’Or: $75 (two courses), $95
The Modern: $115
Gabriel Kreuther: $120
Jean-Georges: $128 (three savory courses plus dessert)
Le Bernardin: $137 ($94 for a City Harvest lounge menu)
Lex Yard: $140 (four courses)
Thomas Keller’s Per Se used to offer shorter, lower-priced lunch menus back in the day, but that French American fine dining institution is currently only open for dinner. But next door at the Deutsche Bank center, Masa serves a $495 service-included tasting at lunch, about half the dinner price. That “discount” gets you toro caviar, 18 pieces of sushi, and two hand rolls. But while the steep cost screams “power” and “exclusion,” the length of the meal puts it at the far end of what a power lunch could be.
Indeed, spending over $100 after tax and tip on a single unremarkable toro roll at Bar Masa or Kappo Masa is more of a power move! A power meal is not necessarily about getting the best thing.
The Power Lunch Price Index, Part II
Some of the more old=school power spots like Michael’s and The Grill are a la carte only (indeed I’m using the word “power” somewhat loosely throughout this column). So what follows are a few notable power spot dishes, from both newer and older venues. Some of the prices are quite high. Others are not. Either way, it’s nice to have a list of these all in one place so we can keep track:
Fifty Three’s mizuna salad: $32
Cafe Boulud’s croque monsieur: $40
Santi’s cavatelli with rosemary oil and red prawns: $42
Marea’s gnocchetti with rosemary oil and shrimp $52
Marea’s red wine octopus fusilli: $49
Marea’s lobster roll: $52
Lex Yard’s Waldorf salad: $26
Lex Yard’s lobster roll: $53
Le Bernardin’s lounge lobster roll: $54
The Grill’s crab cake: $51
Bar Masa’s “toro toro” tuna roll: $78
Kappo Massa’s “toro toro” tuna roll: $86
Four Twenty Five’s smoked salmon app with hash browns: $44
Carbone’s caesar salad: $34
La Tete d’Or’s filet: $45
La Tete d’Or’s skirt steak: $60 ($76 with fries)
Michael’s cobb salad: $35
Fresco by Scotto’s big meatball: $33:
Fresco by Scotto’s cavatelli with sausage: $44
The flex of power dining
Anyone who came up in the New York resto scene in the aughts surely remembers the joy of a long lunch at Jean-Georges. The starting price was just $28 in the early 2000s, until things rose to a reasonable $68 by 2019, a fair deal for four courses.
As a young food writer on a small budget, Jean-Georges was one of the few places I could drop by for a fine dining culinary eduction back then. How things have changed. Lunch at that Central Park West spot now starts at $128 for three courses plus dessert, nearly double the pre-pandemic price!
Or let’s consider the case of Marea, that Central Park South institution that’s still a destination for Italian seafood. Before COVID, you could enjoy a prix fixe lunch for just $67. Now, that’s what you’ll pay for a single plate of scallops. The cost of dining out has also risen recently at Le Bernardin and Le Coucou — two of the city’s top French spots — and elsewhere.
Restaurant prices are up 32 percent nationwide since early 2020. A lot of us who eat out regularly have adjusted our inflation expectations by now. You know that martini will cost almost as much as a burger. But still. Power lunch prices are sometimes in a league of their own. It jolts me a little to see Carbone’s caesar priced at $34 — or Marea’s lunchtime-only lobster roll priced at $52. In the mood for a croque monsieur at Cafe Boulud? That’ll set you back $40. Yes, it has black truffle jambon, but that’s still a heck of a price for a ham & cheese sandwich!
We don’t go to fancy restaurants for discounts. We want to be transported and delighted. We enjoy seeing folks put on their shiny suits or designer jeans and even food critics like me get a little kick out of celebrity sightings. We all pay more to enjoy these sorts of things.
But at a certain point, power lunches are also about letting the prices act as a cover charge. From the restaurant’s point of view, it’s about gatekeeping. From the diner’s point of view it’s about flexing. A tasting menu spot that gets a few Michelin stars might attract wealthy folks and curious diners alike, but a good way to favor the former group is to make everyone pay absolutely absurd prices.
That is to say, the $40 price tag on a ham & cheese is as vital to the essence of that sandwich as the LV emblazoned all over a smartly stitched clutch. These are performative luxuries, but in a different vein than Erewhon smoothie. When you drop a ton of money on a mixed green salad — you’re letting the world know that you’re willing to spend a ton of money not on an object of desire or a bespoke culinary creation, but rather on a very basic thing. A thing that you’re probably not going to ‘gram. A thing you can enjoy with a bunch of like-minded folks in a room where you probably won’t be photographed. So be it. That’s part of what New York is.
Should you try the new Waldorf salad at the revamped Waldorf?
Chef Michael Anthony — who’s still at Gramercy Tavern — has assumed cheffing duties at Lex Yard at the newly refurbished Waldorf Astoria. The lobster roll is extraordinarily expensive, as is the four-course set menu at $140, which I suppose is the type of pricing one might expect at a hotel where the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia once stayed. But the namesake Waldorf salad is somewhat accessible at just $26. How does it taste? Here’s Helen Rosner of The New Yorker with a few words:
The eggs Benedict, zhuzhed up with jammy leeks, are a welcome nod to the hotel’s history, and perhaps a better past-honoring choice than the Walford salad — a layered composition incorporating grapes, walnuts, and a generous portion of sharp, creamy white cheddar cheese — which, for all Anthony’s chefly ministrations, does not manage to meaningfully transcend its fundamental apples-with-mayonnaise bizarreness.
Do read Rosner’s full review!!
The nice thing about prix fixe power lunches!
What I love about a lunchtime prix fixe is that it’s short. But not too short. It usually runs two or three courses, but up to five at certain venues. A lunchtime prix fixe is a little like a Restaurant Week menu, but usually with more choices — and without those crazy price restrictions.
And while a la carte power prices can be eye-popping, a lunchtime prix fixe is usually quite a few dollars cheaper than a comparable meal at dinner.
There’s also something to be said for the psychologically soothing reality of paying a single printed price for a complete meal. For whatever reason, locking myself into a $110 menu can feel like a value, whereas I seem to think I’m getting nickel and dimed when I order a $30 plate of squid, a $55 roast chicken, and a $25 pineapple upside down cake (or whatever). Especially at lunch.
Sweets, it should be noted, are a key part of the prix fixe lunch. A three-course set menu prevents me from doing something I’m guilty of too often at dinner — skipping dessert! Shoving a hot fudge sundae into my face at noon and fighting off a sugar coma is the real indulgence, more so than any duo of martinis. Should I ever return to the formal work force, I can’t wait to stumble into my office at 3:00 p.m., bleary eyed from too many petits fours, with the remnants of a chocolate lava cake staining my white oxford. Walk of pride!
So where should you grab a fancy lunch if you’re looking to save?
Manhattan’s fancy lunch scene still offers quite a few solid values.
Michael White — the opening chef at Marea — offers a heck of a deal at his Italian seafood spot, Santi. He serves two courses for $59 or $72 for three. My back-of-the-envelope math shows that you can save about twenty to thirty bucks over the a la carte dinner offerings. Also: At Le Bernardin’s lunch, you’re saving at least $80 over the (slightly longer) dinner menu — though I still prefer the nighttime service there.
I’m also curious to test drive Tete d’Or’s lunch, especially as it offers a few dishes not served at dinner — including the wagyu chopped steak and the prime rib sandwich.
Post-publication note: I’ll try to get back to Marea soon as I had a really nice meal there a few years back. The move is to order a flight of crudo ($54) at the bar and a few half-portions of pasta!
Eleven Madison Park arguably sneaks into the ranks of power lunch spots with its abbreviated midday menu, offered on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Five courses run $285 in the main dining room. There’s also a $225 bar tasting at lunch. Meals at Daniel Humm’s flagship are plant-based for now, but the restaurant will offer some animal proteins starting in mid-October. You can book a table right here.
Okay, let’s see if I can show up to bat later this weekend with a review or two.
In the meantime, here’s Charlotte Druckman on writing and food writing!
Cheers,
Ryan!!!
This column has been updated for clarity
P.S. Previously on The Lo Times…
We're Getting Priced Out of the Restaurants We Love
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