Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe, where the falcon cannot hear the falconer. I’m your roughshod beast slouching toward Bethlehem, Jon O’Guin, and I’m just hoping to surf this blood-dimmed tide a little more. And as that intro sequence suggests, I have fallen neck deep into chaos, and am paddling fiercely to get out. So, forgive me if today’s post doesn’t quite land, thematically. But it’s also a useful opening because I am assured that my predilection for quoting 1920’s poetry and using the word “predilection” are both solid indicators that I am a pretentious and bougie motherfucker, and that is today’s topic: bougie dinners as a whole, and one in particular, probably.

Editor’s note: Sorry for the delay getting this out, everyone. As Past Jon will slowly explain, it’s been a chaotic week, and he ended up passing out yesterday due to a small illness brought on by the bad air quality (more on that later). It’s also longer than most of our Thursday posts, so he really doubled down on hurting himself.

(Really quickly, just because I will probably use it again without thinking, and I think it’s been like, a year or something since I made this argument, “bougie” is how I choose to spell “boujee”, which, if you are not hip to slang, don’t worry, you still aren’t, because this reference is almost 4 years. (Well, actually, the word itself is SIXTY years old, but it slammed into the cultural mainstream in 2016: Boujee/Bougie (pronounced “boozh-ee”) are slang terms for bourgeois (boor-zhwa), a term used to describe the wealthier classes, specifically how they tend to be obsessed with material things/rules of etiquette or decorum/judging other people. (While invented in the 1600s, that term in turn became popularized by Marx’s use of it as the label for the upper class that extracts wealth and suppresses the value of workers’ labor.) A rap song, “Bad and Boujee” shot the term into public discourse in 2016, due to its core theme of “my partner is a hot, successful, and materially driven woman, and I am a successful and materially driven man, both so materially focused in part because members of our culture so rarely get to experience wealth and material success, so we lack the refinement and generational education to ‘properly’ indulge and celebrate our wealth, but also do not CARE that we are breaking the norms of wealth, because we are allowed to write our own understanding of what it is to be this financially fortunate.”)

Here we see that Offset still enjoys hotboxing (filling a car or small room with marijuana smoke) even though he has acquired the wealth to buy fancy sportscars, reminiscing as the rain falls on the roof about the struggles he went through, while fucking your girlfriend.
It’s very French New Wave ennui…with a hype man.

That was almost a two-paragraph parenthetical. We are in ROUGH waters for my structural stability. Anyway: one of the reasons I decided to cover this topic this week (in addition to allowing me to skip a rush Sunday afternoon) was because of something TWO WEEKS AGO. (TIMELY!) Specifically, Worth It season…8, I wanna say? (Nailed it.) If you’ve forgotten/didn’t read our earlier discussion, Worth It is a Buzzfeed show about two-ish guys going around and eating food. (I say ‘ish’ because as the seasons go on, their sound guy Adam becomes more and more integral to the process, and they are often joined by others) Specifically, they tend to eat the same food (ie, Pancakes, Steak, Fish Tacos, Dumplings, whatever) at three drastically different price points, and then the two consult for which option is the most “worth it” for its price: Is the $100 five-course Bacon Omakase menu WORTH $100, or is the $6 “Bacon flight” of 5 strips better bang for your buck? (Those are both real examples, by the way. And “bacon flight” is an amazing concept that I need more restaurants to embrace.)

Even just the idea of a place where they ask ‘which kind of bacon you want?” is stirring.

So, they have had a bit of a rough season, for the same reason we all have: the pandemic shattered their shooting schedule. It’s pretty hard to have a team of 4-5 people come and shoot in restaurants when…there are no restaurants. But they did their best with what they had. And part of that was their season finale, which two what was supposed to be 2 episodes, and slammed them into one. …Jesus, I am already at 600 words, and this is ALL just SETUP. Okay, streamline: one of the dishes they had in the finale is the “Baller Board”, an off-menu order at a steakhouse in Houston Texas: the baller board consists of…whatever the chefs feel like putting on it that day, with the only guarantee being that it will be “baller”. And I do mean the ONLY guarantee: there is no set price for the board. If you order it, you have to be willing to accept whatever number shows up. For the Worth It boys, that number was seven hundred and ninety eight dollars. Or, for the full visual impact: $798 for ONE dish*.

Of course, it’s better value than that implies, since “dish” was a bit of a stretch for the actual serving size.

A platter is TECHNICALLY still one dish.

The amount of food put on the board was so much that one of the hosts continually forgot A WHOLE FISH at one end of it. And it’s meant to be split between 6-8 people, so it really comes out to around $100 a person, which, for some of the words and flavors on that board, sounded like a fine deal to me.

But then again, my family paid $1,000 for 3 people. So I wanted to take a moment, as someone who has walked on the bougie side, and show you how that sort of thing can happen. Shall we? (I legit don’t know, my energy is plummeting, so we’ll see how far we get.)

A Rich Fucking Meal

Firstly, for some context: I am well-aware that this meal is outside the bounds of many readers. Hell, it would be vastly outside MY reach. But I come from lucky stock, and there’s some finer details that make things moderately more reasonable: Firstly, that $1,000 was a FINAL bill, including tip, taxes, and some little add-ons. So our ‘true’ price was actually around the price of the baller board, somewhere in the $750-800 range. Secondly, for context, due to decades of working in the Shipyard, ascending to higher positions, and the commensurate pay increases, and a frankly frightening amount of stamina for working there, along with a sense of personal responsibility that borders on the neurotic, such a bill is of little concern to my mother: she has, multiple times during the pandemic, put in 24 hours of weekend shifts on top of a 50 hour workweek, so her overtime pay charts are STAGGERING. She can make more in two days than I made in a month working three jobs.  (Though, in her defense…the family finances were, until recently, predicated on TWO incomes…)

I have made myself sad enough that I will need $22 whiskey to get rid of it.

That was probably too much information, but I am falling apart, as I mentioned: One of our chickens needed surgery on Tuesday, and moving it into the house has messed me up, on a schedule front, and on a “chickens put off a lot of dust and stuff that messes with the air quality”. So, how do we spend that much? I’m not going to lie to you, folks, a LOT of it is going to be kind of boring to look at. Why? Because when I say my family aren’t alcoholics…Well, I’m not LYING, but there is a great deal of nuance being lost: we do love to hoard, and try, alcohol. And given my size, it takes a LOT of alcohol to get me drunk. I believe, over the course of the…two and a half hour dinner, that everyone in the group had at least 3-4, with Nate dragging down the average thanks to being the driver. I was closer to 7-8, and checking a BAC chart, that means I was basically only a drink and a half over the legal limit to drive. So there was a fairly large AMOUNT of alcohol: a bottle of wine, several cocktails, and part of dessert was an assortment of MORE alcohol.

From left to right, a port, an ice wine, and a fancy whiskey Nate ordered.

So, running the numbers, that’s ALREADY almost…fuck, $300?  I wish I could be more accurate, but for some reason, I didn’t think to photograph the menu, so I can only go off of what we had pictures of, and what I can piece together from current menus, which are obviously a little the worse for wear due to Corona. I believe I had 3 cocktails, a glass of red wine (MAAAAYbe two), and we each ‘kept’ one of the dessert options, after the first round of tastings. The bottle of wine was like…$80? Oh, nope, I’ve been informed it was actually $140.  Each of MY cocktails was 15 bucks, (Nate’s were about $20)  and I know one of the dessert drinks was more expensive, like…$25-30. Oh, no, I have been informed I low-balled AGAIN, and it was actually $60. Meaning it was likely a 20ish year single-malt…and I was reminded that I also ordered an extra $22 shot. So…probably closer to $360. THAT is a key step in how a meal can get up to $1,000: fancy alcohol is EXPENSIVE. There is a Whiskey that is $185 a glass on the menu, so we were in the upper range of drinks, but by no means the real high-ball numbers.

Beyond the costly cocktails and luxurious liquors, we also had what was functionally a four course meal: Appetizers, Soup and Salad, Entrees, and Dessert.

Appetizers were super simple, because there was only one: A single dish of Tenderloin Diablo, which are chunks of tenderloin simmered in a spicy cream sauce, with bread. $20 for the table.

This is basically “fancy steak bites”, and honestly, it was pretty damn good.

After that, we get into a bit of the performative aspect: one of the big gimmicks of El Gaucho is several prominent dishes are prepared “tableside”, which means that some portion of the process is performed…beside your table. So for instance, if you order the Caesar salad, a cart is wheeled over with a large bowl, all the ingredients of the Caesar dressing, as well as the lettuce, croutons, and cheese, and they make the dressing in the bowl at the table, and toss it there before portioning it out. It’s an old school move, originally meant to let the chef show off their skills, and let customers get a look at the ingredients so they knew they were good. It also lets them charge more, since you’re taking up more of the server’s time and energy. Which is why the Caesar is $16 a person.

I then leaned into my bougie nature, and ordered a soup as well.

I don’t even LIKE Mushrooms!
(They’re perfectly fine. I’m don’t LOVE them, but they have plenty of great uses.)

All told, the salads and soup were around $60 for all three of us.

Now, for the entrée, we already knew what was going to happen, partially. Historically, my brother and mother always split the chauteaubriand, a cut I know I talked about before, but just to re-iterate: the chateaubriand is a massive center-cut tenderloin. You know how you get those 4-5 ounce tenderloin steaks? This is 4+ of those still in one chunk. (roughly 20 oz) It’s served with baked potato, asparagus, tomato, mushroom, and a “cliff sauce”, apparently derived from a sauce served at the Cliff House, a famous San Francisco restaurant and steakhouse, according to someone who asked them where the name came from. It is carved tableside, and the cliff sauce is whipped up there on the cutting board. (it’s a mixture of dry mustard, the juices from the meat, and some other ingredients. It’s an order that runs around $140, and is intended for 2. (Most of their tableside dishes are intended for/require at least 2 orders, probably to justify the time investment/keep the ingredient proportions consistent.) I got the ONE dish on the menu you can get tableside for one, the SKEWER.

Shown sans skewer.

This one has a very showy presentation, consisting of the meat skewered on a spike with a cupped guard over the handle, which they fill with a high-proof liquor, ignite, and then ladle the burning alcohol over the meat to fall back into the cup, bathing the meat with fire in front of you. I do not have pictures of that process, because…I’m not entirely sure I’m even allowed THESE pictures, so I certainly attempted to avoid taking pictures while the waitstaff was around. (I’m MOSTLY sure, since I’m reviewing and discussing the process, that I’m fine.)

We also had several side dishes: the first one being the most important: the Corn. El Gaucho’s corn side dish is my go-to example of how transformative experiencing new dishes can be: the first time I had it, it redefined my concept of what a corn side could be, in the same way that I once described meeting a specific woman: the total-body shock of “Oh, that’s what perfection looks like”; the shocking discovery that your entire standard for judgment now has to accommodate a new high-water mark. It has never been QUITE as good as it was that first time, but it is still quite good. We also had some roasted Brussels sprouts, a dish that I personally am quite fond of, and Mac and Cheese, a favorite side dish of my mother. Three sides, totally about $40 all told.

The brussels sprouts on the right might LOOK weird, because they’re tossed in a white balsamic glaze, which is delicious, but not very visually appealing.

Then, in addition to our dessert drinks, we closed with one more tableside element, Bananas Foster, which I’ve discussed somewhat before, and is a crucial element of the restaurant’s appeal to most of my family. It is the standard by which other Bananas Foster are judged. And it’s fun to watch: flaming alcohol, bubbling sugar syrup, it’s a nice dish to close with a very different kind of richness. $42 for the three of us.

Might might honestly have looked a little cooler.

So that’s $360 for the FOOD, another $360 in drinks, $720. Then we grabbed $30 in spice mixes, because we were 6 drinks deep, so I wanted to try making Diablo sauce someday. That’s $750, plus taxes (10% in Tacoma) and a 20% gratuity, we ended up at $1009.

Was it worth it? Well, as we noted Monday, we got several days’ worth of meals out of it, and Nate in particular noted that after the Icewine we had at dessert, he’s going to ‘always’ try it if he sees it on a menu. It’s all a matter of proportion. For us, it was a great deal. For others, it would probably be too pricey.

Did I have a point with this, other than to talk about big expensive meals? Yes. Do I remember it? No. But we’re VERY late getting this uploaded, because, as I mentioned, the air quality did a NUMBER on me: I basically passed out in the middle of the day. So..I had a nice dinner a year ago, fancy dinners are expensive…damn it feels good to be a gangster? I don’t know. I have to massage a chicken’s stitches and convince it to DRINK WATER.

I know you hate wearing the collar, but the answer to that is not TO CHOOSE DEATH.

MONDAY: SCREAMING. AND EGGPLANT, PROBABLY. MAYBE SOME PEAS. ALMOST CERTAINLY BEEF.

THURSDAY: MORE SCREAMING.