The advent of the £50 main has ruined restaurants for me

Telegraph

21-02-2025

When my friend Holly and I head out for dinner, we've traditionally eaten like Tudors. Rich Tudors, I mean, not poor ones. Most famously, for some celebration or other a few years ago, we ate in a posh Notting Hill restaurant where barbecued ducks' hearts were an amuse-bouche, and we went on to have steak tartare and turbot with truffle. Plus chocolate tart for pudding and a good deal of red wine. The next morning, I woke with a crippling stitch in my stomach and subsequently spent an hour writhing around on the floor of A&E at Charing Cross Hospital before I was diagnosed with appendicitis. 'What did you eat last night?' the triage nurse asked. 'A bit of fish and some broccoli,' I groaned, deciding to leave out a few details.
Last week, we were at it again, off to a smart restaurant in Marylebone. Holly had booked a table for my advance birthday celebration at a place called Lita, which was thrilling because it just so happened that Lita was awarded its first Michelin star in the very same week.
'It is southern Mediterranean food,' our waiter explained gravely, handing us the menus. And lita, some of you may know, is a Spanish term of endearment for a grandmother: little grandma. The cooking is supposed to be similarly cosy and evocative. So there were sardines, Amalfi lemons, duck pasta, linguine, lamb with Italian courgettes, and so on and so on. It all sounded wildly delicious. But then I looked at the prices and felt panicked.
Starters that cost north of £30, main courses mostly for £50-plus. We could share a turbot for £160, or, if we were feeling really Tudor, a rib of Galician beef also for £160. Luckily, I no longer have an appendix to trouble me afterwards. The wine list was thick and heavy, but as I skimmed that I felt a bit ill too, because bottles seemed to start at £60 and leap up intimidatingly from there.
'Still or sparkl—' began the waiter. 'TAP IS FINE!' I screeched, having already started mentally totting up the bill in my head.
'And do you maybe want to begin with a glass of champag—'
'No! I think just wine,' I said quickly.
We ordered a starter of bluefin tuna since Hols had read it was unmissable, along with the duck ragu strozzapreti because our waiter said that was pretty good too. Then, because I'd spied the sensational-looking plate on a neighbouring table, I said why don't we share the pork chop (£80), which came with delicate slices of apple, capers, salad leaves and topped with pieces of crackling. Plus, a side of roast pink fir potatoes (£8).
'And would you like some bread while you wai—'
'No! No bread!' I cried, having noticed that a side of bread was £8. Although, 20 minutes later we retracted that when the tuna arrived (all six slices of it, a starter for someone on Ozempic), and we decided thick slabs of the stuff was necessary to mop up the olive oil and pink peppercorns. That's another tenner on the bill, I thought, Eeyore-like, once we'd added on service.
It was all outstandingly good, and this was a restaurant newly anointed by Michelin, so it was hardly going to be cheap. But even though it was a birthday treat, it was also a very bold bill. Around us, tables of 30-somethings merrily bowled their way through T-bones, and the ribs of Galician beef, ordering bottle after bottle of wine, and I wondered who they were. They couldn't all be hedge funders, even in Marylebone.
Restaurants aren't having much fun at the moment, whether you're running a posh joint in London or a pub in the country. Energy's gone up, staffing costs have gone up, supplier costs have gone up, and punters are cutting back. Places are closing; hospitality needs us to eat out. But the rise of the £50 main course – now not uncommon, at least in London – is quite something, is it not? And where London goes, other places follow. Presumably there will soon be £8 bread and £80 pork chops on menus in parts of the Cotswolds. Will £8 potatoes and £16 puddings reach as far as the border? I can't imagine the Scots will be having any of that.
It's extraordinary that anyone can manage this on a regular basis, and yet plenty of restaurants are heaving. I talked to a friend who lives in Clerkenwell on the weekend and he sees the same thing around him. Places charging £40 or £50 for a main course, practically full until Christmas. He and his wife go to Bouchon Racine, a relatively trendy newcomer, every now and then, but such is the clamour for a table there that they always make their next reservation, months in advance, as they settle the bill. A slightly older gentleman, his theory is that a good number of youth have given up ever being able to get on the property ladder and believe the planet is about to implode, so they're out eating plates of duck and côte-de-boeuf in the meantime. Are most Gen-Zs, in fact, Seventh-Day Adventists?
That eating out is expensive is not a wholly original observation. But so expensive? I'm a greedy person, often happiest at a table with a menu in front of me, along with family and friends. I'm also not on my uppers, but with rising costs elsewhere and the end of my mortgage looming, the £50 main course is simply too extravagant. I want to support restaurants. I really do. Let me at the bread and the pâté and the langoustines and the veal. Give me pudding and, go on then, one more entirely unnecessary glass of that wine. But the days of feasting like a monarch just returned from a day in the deer park may be over. Nothing wrong with a nice bowl of pasta at home, after all.