Several years ago my youngest son was going to Tulane University in New Orleans and to help pay for some of his expenses he was working at a four star restaurant as a sommelier and I can tell you that if they have different waiters to serve you the different courses, names you can't pronounce to call those fellers it is going to set you back a bundle. My best friend and I had gone to Louisanna snow goose hunting and I thought it would be nice to eat where Scott worked.
Scott had already warned us that they wouldn't seat us unless we were wearing a suit and tie so we had gone prepared. When we were seated Scott informed us that he had already ordered for us so we never saw a menu. When the first course was brought to the table Bob and I both looked at each other wondering how the place could be so crowded when they served such small portions. Turns out that it was just the first of eleven more courses to follow. I also found out that night that your mouth must get dirty when you eat cuz between courses they kept bringing us little dishes of sorbet to "cleanse our pallets".
Of course he insisted that we have wine with our meal and with our dessert we had to have coffee. This restaurant is famous for their coffee presentation at your table. First a lemon is peeled, then an orange is placed on a fork and peeled almost to the bottom resulting in a long hanging peeling that the lemon peel in intertwined with. That resulting braid is studded with whole cloves and the ends of it our placed in a super hot pot of coffee. Next Grand Marnier is poured on the orange and allowed to drizzle into the coffee and accross the table. A match is touch to the Grand Marnier and a blue flame races across the table and up the lemon and orange spiral. As the flame hits the cloves they explode with a white spark.
When the final dish had been cleared and we were trying to discreetly loosen buttons and ties, Scott brought me the bill. It was over six hundred dollars. Once my heart started beating again and I got out my credit card and Scott starts laughing. He had mentioned to his boss that I was in town and he told Scott to have us come in, get the "full treatment" and he would pick up our tab. The food was incredible, the service superb, and the experience was worth the prices but it is not something I would be willing to repeat on my dime.