We get a lot of fan mail. (OK, one piece.) Even more than fan mail, we get a lot of questions which sound like this, "Yo, idiots, what's the best value/deal/place where I can donate plasma in the city?"
Well, that is a tricky question. How do you define "value"? Does it have to be cheap? What's your expense account? Where are you? Now you can see why we don't get many questions.
In one of his farewell articles for the NY Times, restaurant critic Frank Bruni touched on this issue which I will paraphrase here: Any restaurant can serve you a $3.99 piece of beef and call it a steak dinner. However that is not true value because you are getting (crap) what you paid for (nothing).
A good value should make you feel like you are getting much more than you paid for. Which is why I hereby anoint Restaurant August's $20.09 Friday everyday lunch special as the best deal or value in town.
For $20.09 you get an amuse, an appetizer, an entree, and dessert. Throw in a glass of wine or two, King George's tithe and tip, and you are looking at a $40 meal. Now I can hear you groaning. "$40 for lunch. What do you take us for, White House staffers?" No. But let's say you usually eat a crappy footlong combo meal everyday. Cut that out for a week and treat yourself.
I have been all up in this menu. I like the playfulness of the tomato mozzarella salad, where tomato puree is stuffed inside balls of mozzarella, but I find the process makes the cheese a little tough. The enormous hunk of pate with accompaniments is almost enough for a meal. And sometimes the truffled gnocchi with blue crab lurks on the menu. The herbed goat cheese dumplings with lacquered duck and matsutake mushroom broth (poured over the dish from a French press) are sublime - a mixture of freshness, salt, earthiness, and meaty duck.
For desserts there is always a chocolate offering and usually a cheese course. Selecting either would not be a bad option.
But the real reason this is a great value is that you are getting the professionalism and service of a 5 star/5 bean/5 whatever restaurant at bargain prices. You will leave feeling coddled, cared for, and truly spoiled. It may just be enough to make you want to go back to the office.
Restaurant August Lunch - Eagle.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
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4 comments:
I believe it was either Jimmy or Warren Buffet who said, "Price is what you pay, Value is what you get when its Five o clock somewhere."
Hot DAMN. Now that Commander's is no longer doing a $15 2-course lunch, that is pretty damn good.
Is it only Fridays? I thought they were doing the lunch deal every weekday now.
Becky,
You are correct, the lunch special is everyday. Rene had it right the first time, but I changed it because the website says that August is only open for lunch on Friday. I think that we have it straight now.
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