The Value of An Expensive Meal

There was a time not too long ago when I thought Outback Steakhouse meant splurging. (You mean a steak AND a bloomin' onion? Crikey!) I felt this way because I knew Outback was more expensive than cooking burgers on the grill or running down the street for a footlong from Subway.

I also felt this way because I really didn't know any better. Then I met this girl named Bridget.

Bridget has a lot of ideas -- some of which even stick. (Others like, "Hunny, let's sign up for this three-legged marathon race!" aren't so good.) One of her best brain surges, no doubt, has been the one that has us going out for an expensive-ish dinner once every month or so. As usual, it takes me a while to warm up to these ideas. My defenses in relation to eating out at swankier places were fairly predictable:

• "$40 for a single piece of meat? Does the waiter chew the damn thing for me, too?"
• "Shouldn't we spend the money on something like sports tickets instead?"
• "Yeah, but we'd be full after a meal at Pizza Hut, too!" 

Still, my darling wife persisted and we've started to enjoy an occasional pricey meal or two. And, well, she was right. Just this past weekend, we took advantage of Restaurant Week here in Boston and ate an absolutely delicious meal at a place called Rialto in Cambridge. From the ridiculously tasty bread, to the tender mussels, to the melt-in-your-mouth tenderloin, to the gooey marshmallow thing I ate for dessert, it was off-the-charts good. (In fact, I reviewed it on Yelp, which I do now.) 

After the meal, as we walked home, I got to thinking about why the experience was so good. I couldn't pinpoint one thing, realizing that the ingredients, the food itself, the service, and the ambiance all contributed to the feeling. But really, it was more than that. It was more about the experience itself. It was about the anticipation, the dressing up, the knowing how lucky we are to have some disposable cash. It was everything. 

If we did it every weekend, of course, it would lose its appeal. (As I read recently in a book about memories, "Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it.") But we don't do it every weekend and we occasionally miss a month because we're on one of our 11 honeymoons. But when we do go, I find the value to be far greater than the $100-$200 that leaves our account.

Besides, how many fried onions can one man eat?