Michelin dining for cheapskates: Shoddy Goods 073
2
Hey, Jason Toon here, strapping on the feedbag for another Shoddy Goods, the newsletter from Meh about consumer culture. If Meh could sell gourmet cuisine, it might look something like this…
Where can you stuff your gut high-class style without spending an arm and a leg? Read on, ravenous one
I’m blessed with an unrefined palate. You know that scene in Ratatouille when the foodie-rat Remy is trying to explain the brilliance of cuisine to his cloddish brother Émile? I’ll admit I’m more of an Émile. And I’m OK with that.
While I love to eat, I don’t have the kind of finely tuned tongue that can either elevate a meal to transcendent art on the level of the greatest music or movies, or ruin it because some little detail fails to meet my exacting standard. For the most part, I think food that isn’t straight-up disgusting is usually pretty good.
So when I go out to eat, I’m usually willing to settle somewhere in the midrange rather than shell out for peak dining experiences. The difference just isn’t enough, to me, to justify the price. I could buy, like, five books with that money! Hardcovers, even!
But what if a culinary philistine like me wanted to try a Michelin-starred restaurant just to see what the fuss was about? What’s the least you could get away with spending, in the United States? There are lots of suggestions out there, but I want a specific dollar amount at one specific restaurant.
Full stomachs, full wallets
Let’s figure it out. First, the rules. The restaurant must be awarded at least one star by the Michelin Guide; those in their “Bib Gourmand” and “Selected Restaurants” category don’t count.
Then, let’s define our sample meal. This is about bargain indulgence, not number-go-down for its own sake, so we’re not talking bread, ketchup, and hot water. I decided a fair look at what a legit dining experience actually costs would include at least one appetizer or side, a main dish, a dessert, and a glass of wine (or a high-end soft drink, if they don’t serve wine).
And we also won’t pick the very cheapest options, because chances are those wouldn’t all be what you’d actually want to eat. I’d decided to pick the second- or third-cheapest in each category, unless there were only two options, where I’d pick the cheaper. That seems like a good rough estimate of where you’d wind up if you were being conscious of price but not fanatical about it.
Putting the “bib” in “Bibendum”
OK, so when I set the Michelin Guide’s search parameters to restaurants in the USA with at least one star and in their lowest price category ($$, or “A moderate spend”), nine restaurants are left standing. I looked at all their menus, wiped the drool off my keyboard, and realized that my little structure wouldn’t necessarily fit every restaurant.
Some have more of a share-plate vibe. Some include sides with mains while others don’t. Some don’t serve wine or don’t publish their drink menus online. So I took my best guess as a certified cheapskate for what combination of dishes would capture the experience. And remember, menus change constantly, sometimes every day, so don’t hold me to any of these dishes or prices.
And the dinner is…
Congratulations, hungry Texans. Four of the top five most affordable Michelin-starred restaurants in America are barbecue joints in your state, three of which are in Austin. I swear I’m not saying this just because Meh is headquartered in Texas. I’m sure each of you has a favorite that hasn’t earned that coveted star, but take that up with the Michelin man. (And tell me about it in the comments, for the next time I’m in the Lone Star State.)
My semi-unscientific survey says these five meals are the shortest route from your wallet to Michelin-star dining in America:
5th-cheapest: Leroy and Lewis Barbecue, Austin, TX, $50
- Main: 1 Meat & 2 Sides Plate, $17
- Side: Hog Fat Cornbread, $9
- Dessert: Cheddar cheesecake, $9
- Drink: Wine for the People Sauvignon Blanc, $15
4th-cheapest: Holbox, Los Angeles, CA, $46
- Appetizer: Tostada de Atun, $12
- Main: Grilled Kanpachi Collars, $18
- Dessert: Churros & chocolate sauce, $7
- Drink: San Pellegrino sparkling water, $9
3rd-cheapest: la Barbecue, Austin, TX, $41
- Main: 1/2 lb. Pulled pork, $15.50
- Sides: Potato salad, $4.50 & Chipotle Coleslaw, $4.50
- Dessert: Rockman cookie, $6.50
- Drink: House red wine, $10
2nd-cheapest: InterStellar BBQ, Austin, TX, $40
- Main: 1/2 lb. Pork ribs, $17
- Sides: Smoked Gouda Mac & Cheese, $4 & Jalapeno Slaw, $4
- Dessert: Banana pudding, $5
- Drink: bring your own bottle of wine, $10 (estimate)
Cheapest: CorkScrew BBQ, Spring, TX, $33.50
- Main: 1/2 lb. Turkey breast plate, $15
- Sides: 3-Cheese Mac, $4 & Pit-Smoked Beans, $4
- Dessert: Cobbler, $4
- Drink: 32 oz. Tea, $6.50
Feast your eyes on that! You can still get a full Michelin-starred nosh on for fifty bucks or less… if you happen to be in Texas or LA. If not, well, maybe it’s time to move there.
My sample meals for all nine of the contenders, with links to menu sources, are in this spreadsheet. I applied my own semi-subjective method across the board, but some menus are hard to find online. So if you own one of these restaurants and feel like I was looking at an inaccurate or outdated menu, sorry, but keeping your menu current and accessible might be a good idea. Otherwise, congrats to you all on behalf of tightwad gourmands across America!
Now, just one question remains: why did I torture myself by writing this piece on an empty stomach?
CorkScrew BBQ owners Will and Nichole Buckman with a big fan (from the CorkScrew Instagram)
And the dishes in the main image up top are from (L to R) CorkScrew, Holbox, la Barbecue, and Interstellar
I hesitate to say I have a particularly refined diet—some of my favorite meals have been the eggs, hashbrowns, and toast at the local diner—but I’ll splurge when the opportunity arises. How about you: outside of home, what’s the best meal experience you’ve ever had? Let’s hear about it in this week’s Shoddy Goods chat.
—Dave (and the rest of Meh)
Enjoy these finely seasoned, expertly prepared past Shoddy Goods stories for the low, low price of $0:
- The strange case of Ducky McCaleb, inventor and/or conman
- 3D-printed food is perfectly normal (seriously)
- The miles higher club: tips from a travel rewards maximizer
I hesitate to say I have a particularly refined diet - some of my favorite meals have been the eggs, hashbrowns, and toast at the local diner - but I’ll splurge when the opportunity arises.
How about you: outside of home, what’s the best meal experience you’ve ever had?
- 12 comments, 1 reply
- Comment
The very best meal I ever had was over 40 years ago when we stopped in a Village Inn on the way home from the hospital after my daughter was born. I was terrified and incredulous that they let us walk out of the hospital carrying this tiny human being. I mean, we didn’t have to sign anything or get checked out or anything!
We had coffee, beef and mushroom omelets, hashbrowns, and biscuits and gravy.
It felt like the first meal of the rest of my life and it was. In all that confusion and apprehension, it was a touch of the familiar and comfort and for that reason it was the best meal in my life.
Best meal, hmmm. That’s a tough one. What was awesomesauce 50 years ago might not spark my fancy today.
I’m a relatively simple cook. I look at some of these fancy presentations and think, yeah, right, no. However sometimes what a creative chef does tastes really good no matter how it looks.
But the best thing I ate in November was this simple sandwich at the Anaheim Hilton (pre LACon meeting for staff) at Poppys
Route 66 Chicken Club
garlic-brined chicken breast, smoky bacon, avocado, arugula, tomato jam, balsamic aioli, potato bun
It all just fit together into a yumtastic but simple fair.
I think K.I.S.S. is the best way to keep food good
While living in Tokyo a dear friend invited me to a traditional Kaiseki-ryōri (Japanese multi-course haute cuisine). It was run by a husband and wife team. Not only delicious but exquisitely presented. Will never forget!
BEST restaurant meal?
…
The most elaborate is probably a Cantonese honey-walnut style shrimp (which uses giant butterflied shrimp, smothered in sesame-honey sauce and walnuts, usually atop sauteed garlic broccoli) at some family banquet hall that’s long since closed. It was luxurious and decadent (because it was for a wedding) and along with typical Chinese dishes like braised duck or honey short ribs, there was a long line of desserts: fried sweet-paste sesame balls, white sugar sponge cake soaked in wine, almond jelly tofu with canned syrup, and the old glass bottles of orange Fanta. I’m sure it was expensive, but I sure didn’t pay for it.
These days, I actually have great fondness for a little “pastry sandwich”. It’s a French(?) bakery’s lunch menu: cold marinated roast beef slices wedged with some crisp onion sprouts between two fresh beignets and doused with some A1/BBQ sauce (it’s thick like BBQ but bitter and smoky like A1; the beignets provide the sweetness). It’s quite refreshing and I indulge whenever I can (with an onion soup on the side). Actually, the soup is about as expensive as the sandwich (which is to say not much; they’re a combined $15 with tax and a 25% tip), but the sandwich (as of this year) has also shrunk since I initially started eating it (possibly so has the soup). Typically, the more popular lunch items are the cutlet or schnitzel sandos. (And fried cronuts.)
An even cheaper meal would be out-of-USA Burger King or Pizza Hut – where in some countries, these franchises are treated as sit-down restaurants and have a really higher quality of product for roughly the same domestic price (though relative to that country’s market, it would be the cost of a sit-down restaurant meal).
If we’re really going cheap-o without cooking at home – Red Baron frozen deep-dish pizza. Very tasty, very filling, but only because the crust is probably infused with lard.
My son was doing his externship for the Culinary Institute of America, at The Brown Derby restaurant at Disney World, in the MGM park. There were 14 of us at dinner that night…and we were treated like royalty! Amazing service and stellar food. I think we ended up with just about everything they had to offer!! Sadly that restaurant isn’t there any longer. He went on to graduate however, and is an incredible chef! (Yup- proud mom here)
I live near Fort Worth, TX. Barbecue restaurants have come a long way if they’re getting Michellin stars! They all tend to be kind of expensive, star or not. My husband is a barbecue fanatic and frequently looks for different restaurants to try. I have not heard of any of these. Austin is about 3-4 hours away, but Spring isn’t too far. Might have to check it out!
A bunch of years back, I went with friends to Japan, and we stayed at a ryokan in Miyajima. The whole experience was pretty amazing, but the food! Miyajima is apparently known for its oysters, so our meals featured them deliciously.
I love oysters.
One of my fellow travelers? Did not.
Over the years I’ve had many stellar dining experiences in restaurants all over the place. Ranging from rabbit in Quebec to Lionfish in Montgomery, trout in Colorado to calamari in Aruba, Ethiopian in Nashville to crawfish etouffee in LA, a 7 course wild game meal (with wine pairings) in Montreal to raclette in Dahlonega GA, and many more that don’t pop into my mind immediately.
All were fantastic and made even better by being shared with my wife of 48 years.
Hands down, the very best restaurant meal I ever had was at a steakhouse by the side of the road outside of a smallish town in Utah. The fancy steak joint in Kansas City (that I could not have afforded if my brother hadn’t been paying) was not up to the same level, though it came reasonably close. Just barely behind the Utah steakhouse was a side-of-the-road café in the middle of New Zealand’s North Island. Sadly, that establishment closed last year. Nearly all of the restaurant meals I had in NZ were at a level that exceeded what I’ve had here in the US.
One dish that sticks out in my memory is the bison tenderloin at a Native American resort in Arizona. That was just one of the seven courses, and it wasn’t just the food that poked you in the eye. That was the chef-iest place I’ve ever eaten, and the service and presentation were almost intimidating. I don’t know what a Michelin star restaurant is like, but can’t imagine it gets that much better.
I also remember an Indian restaurant in Harrisburg, PA; a crêpe place in Vancouver; and Emeril’s in New Orleans. The group of folks I used to work with have a favorite Italian place, run by an old client of ours, where I absolutely must have the lasagna bolognese every time.
And to be honest, some of the things we make here at home are pretty damn tasty too.
@TheFLP
Being of first generation French descent I tend to live by the axiom:
Live to Eat NOT Eat to Live
Bien joué… Vive Bibendum
)
(Though I can cut $9 bucks off the HOLBOX bill. Not gonna order the San Pellegrino!
Oh no you don’t, you agent for Big Tire. I see what you are trying to do by tempting me to drive to Austin.