Seven Hundred Dollars Is Not a Price. It’s a Dare, and New York Should Stop Accepting It

Let’s say plainly what Mitani New York is asking of this city: $700 per person for a tasting menu, with wine pairings billed on top of that, in a Midtown room that opened in May. The justification on offer is that Chef Yasuhiko Mitani’s counter in Tokyo has a four-year waitlist. I think that justification is thin, and I think New York diners are being invited to mistake scarcity for quality.

Start with the waitlist, because it is doing nearly all the work here. A four-year wait is a fact about Tokyo, about one counter, about demand for a limited number of seats in one place. It tells you almost nothing about what a different kitchen, in a different city, with different fish and different staff, will deliver at a Midtown address. The waitlist travels in the press release. The counter does not. Those are two separate products, and the $700 price treats them as one.

This is the oldest trick in luxury retail: borrow the prestige of a thing you cannot easily get, and sell its shadow somewhere you can. The Tokyo waitlist is the handbag with the long queue. Opening in Midtown converts a four-year wait into a reservation you can book this season, and the price tag is meant to reassure you that you are getting the real thing. It is a reassurance with no evidence behind it.

Now the number itself. Seven hundred dollars before wine pairings means the true cost of an evening is meaningfully higher, and the article does not give us a figure for the pairings, so no one should pretend to know the total. That is exactly the problem. When a restaurant leads with a headline price and leaves the add-ons vague, the diner discovers the real bill at the end of the meal, when the leverage is gone. A place charging this much owes guests the full price, in writing, before they commit to a seat.

I am not arguing that expensive sushi is illegitimate. Omakase at the top end is labor, sourcing and craft, and good fish is costly. A serious counter can earn a serious price. My objection is narrower and, I think, harder to wave away: a price this high shifts the burden of proof onto the restaurant, and the burden is not met by pointing at a waitlist on another continent. At $700, the meal itself has to carry the argument, course by course, and the people who tell the rest of us whether it did are the critics and reviewers who decide what gets treated as a landmark.

That is where I want to put pressure. Coverage of openings like this tends to arrive pre-loaded with the restaurant’s own framing: the pedigree, the waitlist, the price as a signal of seriousness. A review that repeats those talking points before the first piece of nigiri is judged has already done the marketing for free. The reviewing class should resist that. Judge the room as a New York restaurant, because that is what it is, and weigh it against the other things a diner could do with that money in the same city on the same night.

Consider what else is in the news this week. The Times is covering Sofra’s Egyptian cooking in Bay Ridge and the gukbap at Andamiro, a rich, comforting bowl praised as the real draw of its menu. Tamarind in Tribeca is marking 25 years. Those are restaurants whose worth is argued by what lands on the table, not by a number that tries to end the conversation before it starts. A bowl of gukbap does not need a four-year waitlist to be a good night out. That contrast is the point.

The diner has power here, and it is simple: do not let the price do the thinking. If you are going to spend $700 and more, ask what you are buying. Is it the fish, the technique, the hospitality, or the story of a faraway counter? If it is the story, you are paying a premium for a rumor.

So here is my demand, and it is directed at Mitani New York and at the people who write about it. To the restaurant: publish the complete cost of the evening, including the wine pairings, up front, so no guest is surprised at the check. Stop leaning on the Tokyo waitlist as proof of what is being served in Midtown, and let the New York kitchen be judged as a New York kitchen. To the critics and editors: withhold the superlatives until the meal has earned them, and tell readers plainly, in dollars, whether it did. A price is a claim. At $700, it is a loud one, and it deserves to be tested, not applauded.

— NYC Restaurant Voice Editorial Desk · Column (AI-assisted) · Columnist