$1000 dinner for two? Top shelf goes through the roof

For years, high-end dining in Australia was considered a bargain — but there has been a quantum shift and we’re all the poorer for it. Are restaurants playing catchup or having a lend?

The dining room at Vue de Monde, where dinner for two will now set you back $935.

I just love eating out. Fancy. Plain. DIY ethnic or gueridon service haute cuisine, and everything between, it’s all a pleasure (unless of course there’s a little food poisoning involved). I’m just not sure I can afford it anymore.

For as long as I can remember, folks in the restaurant game have come home from fact-finding missions abroad telling anyone who’ll listen, “High-end dining in Australia is a bargain.” And it was true. You could eat in the very best dining rooms in Australia, in years gone by, for reasonable money. I’m talking places like Quay, Sepia in its time, and Attica. Places that foreigners would visit and, thanks in part to a favourable exchange rate, walk away saying what a bargain it was. What a pity we’re not all paid in euros.

Flower Drum, Melbourne’s Cantonese institution, is a bargain at $671 for two. Picture- Nicole Cleary

But it seems to me Covid has been a watershed in the Australian restaurant landscape: those that have come out the other side have decided it’s going to be profitable to open the doors or not open them at all. Which may sound a bit odd but, anecdotally, a lot of restaurant businesses hitherto did not make much profit, but merely paid the owner a wage, with perks.

As we know, prices of everything are going up like Elon’s rockets while wages remain terrestrial. So, to me, and perhaps you, what used to be a justifiable spoil now seems a really big ask in the shadow of all the other non-discretionary outgoings, which keep ratcheting.

Are restaurants playing catchup football or having a lend? I suspect the former, and I’m on your side, not theirs. But it doesn’t change the fact that a proper dinner for two – with a pre-dinner something, a half-decent bottle of wine (say $100, which would be $40 in a bottleshop) and a 10 per cent tip if the waiter does a good job – really doesn’t start under $500 any more.

And that’s just proper, not top-shelf. Those top-shelf dinners – or lunches – we once booked for a special occasion? There’s been a quantum shift. Based on the aforementioned formula (aperitif, set menu and wine for two), here’s a sample of where things are at around the country, and of course it’s easier to compare apples with apples when the offer is a set menu. That’s what this is based on, some obligatory, some an alternative to à la carte.

World-renowned Attica in Melbourne: $957. Oncore, Sydney, the first offshoot for British star chef Clare Smyth: $935. Vue de Monde, always one of Australia’s most expensive: $935. Sushi Room, the new high-end extension of Brisbane’s Calile Hotel: $891 for the set menu (see today’s review). Brae, down in Victoria’s Western District: $913. Tetsuya’s, the grand old institution of Sydney’s Japanese fusion scene: $792. Flower Drum, Melbourne’s Cantonese institution: $671. (A bargain.) Holy truffle, Batman, whatever happened to the Lucky Country?

Lucky I love cooking too.