NYC restaurants ditch expensive chef tasting menus

Inflation-hit foodies are setting aside less time and money for chefs’ extravagant tasting menus – prompting many Big Apple restaurants to ditch the pricey concept in favor of shareable a la carte options, it has learned Side Dish.

Industry insiders say new restaurants aren’t launching tasting menus, and many that do have them are already “cutting back” on the price and time it takes to enjoy — or endure — them.

“The cost of tasting menus has become astronomical, thanks to inflation, commodity prices and staffing costs,” restaurant consultant Donny Evans told Side Dish.

“People, even wealthy people, are more open about the cost of going out to dinner, and the tasting menu exacerbates the whole price point.”

Restaurateur Jeff Katz has witnessed this change firsthand.

Last year, he closed Italian restaurant Al Coro, which offered a variety of tasting menu options in the former Del Posto space — despite the talents of celebrity chef Melissa Rodriguez that earned the restaurant two Michelin stars.

A seven-course menu was $265 per person, with an additional $165 for wine pairings, while a five-course option was $210, plus another $115 per wine.

“We closed Al Coro because it wasn’t working.” Katz told Side Dish. “People want to share their food.”

Al Coro was not the only victim of changing attitudes. Marea, the upscale Italian restaurant on Central Park South, completed their lunch and dinner tasting menus in 2022.

Other high-end restaurants like Eleven Madison Park and Le Bernardin—famous for their tasting menus that cost $365 and $225, respectively—now offer a la carte options, albeit at the bar, for EMP, and in the lounge for Le Bernardin.

For example. the sit-down menu at the French mainstay offers a $48 lobster and a reasonably priced salmon entree for $28.

“Personally, I think the tasting menu will be a thing of the past. People don’t want to pay $200 or $250 per person. It seems a little bit — and they want more choices about what they eat when they go out to eat,” Evans said.

Katz and Rodriguez are now collaborating on a new restaurant, Crane Club, which opens next week at the iconic Del Posto location in the shadow of the High Line at 85 Tenth Ave.

It’s an address Rodriguez knows well.

In 2011, she was hired by Del Posto, where she initially worked with Katz, who was general manager.

The Italian fine-dining restaurant achieved cult status under chef Mario Batali, until he collapsed under an avalanche of sexual harassment and assault allegations that forced him to leave in 2016.

While Rodriguez declined to talk about working in Batali’s toxic workplace — “it was a long time ago,” she says — she describes her kitchen as a very different space.

“I have a very inclusive workplace and always have,” she told Side Dish. “The biggest part of my job is mentoring and providing a workplace where people want to be and want to come.”

Del Posto left in 2021. That’s when Rodriguez and Katz — along with Katz’s former business partner, the late boss James Kent — teamed up and acquired the space.

Katz and Rodriguez opened three different restaurants at the cave site: Al Coro, Mel’s wood-fired pizza, and an underground cocktail bar known as Discolo.

Mel’s was the only one still standing before they first partnered with Tao Group Hospitality to open Crane Club.

“We opened Mel’s almost three years ago. We had such a fun time with her and were often at Al Coro, bringing things into Mel’s kitchen to cook, so it feels like a natural progression to cooking [at Crane Club] this is higher than just pizza and veggies at Mel’s,” Katz said.

While Crane Club will occupy the same space as Al Coro and Del Posto, it will be physically smaller and more intimate. A redesign has trimmed the space from 24,000 square feet to about 18,000 square feet. It features 35 tables in the restaurant, 12 seats at the bar and three private rooms with 14 people each.

The centerpiece is a 12-foot Mibrasa grill, custom-built by Rodriguez, for a menu featuring grilled vegetables, meats and seafood, along with a 1,000-bottle wine list.

Dishes include grilled Dover sole, dry-aged bone-in filet mignon along with grilled, marinated mushrooms, a raw tableside bar service, and pastas like a delicious sfogliatelle, with fontina, a white truffle arancini and Maine sea bass dressed with a caviar-infused shellfish vinaigrette. Desserts feature a banana layer cake with guava sorbet and a chocolate vignette—chef Georgia Wodder’s take on the “freeze aisle favorite.”

The bar program will be overseen by Chris Lemperle, who opened Crown Shy and Overstory with Katz.

Katz emphasized that the a la carte menu is meant to be shared.

“Food, like fashion and music trends, goes through cycles,” Katz said.

“In New York, the dining public is not very interested in long tasting menus at the discretion of the chefs. People want to eat what they want to eat.”