Puritans Wouldn’t Know This $833 Meal
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The pilgrims would be shocked; the Indians, even more so.
That’s from the ballooning cost this year of munching on the traditional Thanksgiving Day turkey in the city’s pricier restaurants, which in one prominent dining spot, Café Gray, runs an astronomical $833.33 a person, whether you’re age 5 or 55.
Of course, prices were a lot cheaper when the pilgrims came to America in 1620. But then again, today’s turkeys — reflecting production cutbacks by poultry processors to jack up the prices — are at the highest levels in 30 years.
“Last year, I paid $0.90 to $1 a pound for turkey; this year, a record $1 to $1.13 a pound,” the president of Joseph Trenk & Sons, a leading poultry distributor to Big Apple restaurants, David Trenk, says. That’s about an 11% yearover-year increase. “You can be sure that everyone along the line, including the consumer, is paying more,” he adds.
Okay, let’s say you want to celebrate Thanksgiving in grand style at one of the city’s top dining spots, such as the Four Seasons restaurant, and you’re willing to ante up the big bucks to do it. In this case, it’s $100 a person. If you’re interested, sorry, you’re out of luck. The place, I’m told, is entirely booked for Thursday and has been for some time.
Although the lights at many of the city’s leading restaurants, such as Le Bernardin and La Grenouille, are turned off on Thanksgiving Day, understandably that’s not the case at the Four Seasons, based on the big business it habitually realizes on this holiday.
“It’s one of our biggest days of the year,” says co-owner Julian Niccolini, who figures the restaurant will serve about 900 dinners and generate sales for the day of around $100,000.
Far and away the city’s most expensive Thanksgiving Day meal, which includes caviar and truffles, is a private chef’s table in the kitchen alcove of Café Gray. The cost of the table, which seats 12, is $10,000. That averages out to $833.33 per person. If you would like to save a few bucks, the restaurant’s regular dining room, which will seat 100 people on this occasion, versus its usual 130, goes for just $500 a person (both children and adults).
The entire affair will be more of an event, and also feature breakfast at 8:30 a.m., a private area for the family to view live the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, a comedy and magic show for the kids, and a dessert and carving demonstration by chef Gary Kunz. The Thanksgiving dinner, set to start at 12:30 p.m., will include wines, champagne, and myriad desserts. Tips, you’ll be pleased to hear, are included.
If you’re enticed by all of this, time is fleeting to make a reservation because 85 of the 100 available dining room seats have already been sold and several parties have expressed interest in the chef’s private table, the restaurant’s director of special events, Maureen Schilling, tells me.
If you would like to avoid Café Gray’s stiff tab, but still have your Thanksgiving turkey at one of the city’s top dining spots, reservations for three and fourcourse dinners, as of this writing, are available at Daniel ($150 per person), Alain Ducasse ($150), Jean Georges ($108), Le Cirque ($90), Bouley ($90), and the Post House ($75).
Meanwhile, turkey economics are simply scrumptious for such restaurants, which, on average, pay an estimated $20 to $25 for a turkey depending on the weight. The average portion per patron runs about a pound. Figure 20 portions a 20-pound turkey, add a few trimmings, such as some vegetables, dessert, and coffee, and that $100– to $150 turkey dinner is a bonanza for restaurants.
If that’s way more than you want to spend, a broad number of poultry shops and delicatessens in the city will be glad to oblige and prepare you a cooked turkey for between roughly $2.99 and $3.99 a pound. Zabar’s will sell you a nine-pound cooked regular 12-pound cooked turkey at $58 and you can buy your fill of fresh turkey at Gristedes at $9.99 a pound.