For What It's Worth

I'm sorry I've been remiss in my updates. It's been a very busy week at work (RIP Pope John Paul II), and I've got a couple extracurriculur projects that have been taking up a lot more of my "free" time than I'd expected (more on those soon).
A week ago, I wrote about my dinner at Plate NYC, whose name embodies one of the city's current culinary trends (serving up various sized "plates" in lieu of "appetizers" or "entrees"). On Monday, three friends and I took advantage of an even stranger trend that's popped up in the last couple of months: restaurants that let the diner decide what he/she pays for the meal.
First came Babu, a candlelit restaurant that serves Calcutta-inspired cuisine, which intentionally left the prices off its extensive and eclectic (fish, for example, comes fried with "chips" or steamed with mustard and green chilis and wrapped in a banana leaf) menu during its first few weeks. Some diners, as Rebecca Mead reported in the New Yorker, responded by paying nothing--others were overly generous (one couple paid $200, over the owner's protestations). Eventually, the prices were written onto the menu: a three-course meal with wine now comes to about $50 a head.
That's a little less than a three-course meal without wine will cost you at Wildflower--unless you dined there on a recent Monday night, when the West Village bistro let the customer decide what dinner was worth. Though not without full knowledge of what the meal would normally cost: the server printed out the prices of each item you ordered on a faux receipt, then asked you to mark down--or up--the price accordingly in the space beside it, along with reasons for the change. Wine was not included. The server also added on a 20% gratuity for herself, and tax based on regular menu prices.
In the end, each of us paid about $37 for a total of three appetizers, two entrees, and two bottles of a $32 Australian shiraz (one of which was initially omitted from our bill, then added on five minutes later by our apologetic server). Though we paid about $8 less apiece than we would have had we adhered to the prices listed, we still felt we'd overpaid a bit. The half-portion of Mac & Cheese sauteed with mushrooms and lobster meat in black truffle oil sounded fabulous, but the mushrooms were so shriveled they were barely visible, and I couldn't taste the lobster at all. The arugula salad, served with dried figs, beets, and goat cheese was good. But the Dixie Duck Quesadilla--made with swiss cheese, cumin, onion, corn, peppers, and "sassy" salsa--was a little soggy (perhaps because it was drowning in a layer of dijon mustard). My foodie friend and blogger, a.k.a. Vittles Vamp, split a steak and prosciutto-bundled asparagus with our friend, Pam. Neither were impressed. Joy and I split an ostrich entree, which tasted pretty good to me; but, as Joy pointed out, we had nothing to compare it to as neither of us had ever had ostrich before. Still, we agreed it was probably not worth the $26 price tag. At the end of the meal, we wrote as much on the comment card, then declined a free round of dessert wines (we'd already had 2 bottles of wine, after all, and were feeling a bit bad about taking free booze after our critical review of the meal). VV vowed not to come back--at least, until the chef lowered his prices. Part of the problem was that she and I had dined at a nearby spot a week earlier that was twice as good and almost half the price. Ironically, we all agreed that the best parts of the meal were those that weren't on the menu: the bread (which was warm, fluffy and glazed with butter and herbs), the wine, and the service.