Expensive tasting menu restaurants are spreading like wildfire. It usually goes a little something like this: make reservations way, way in advance; spend hours tasting up to 40 beautifully composed plates of the chefs choosing; spend upwards of $200 on a night out, booze not included.  If you have the cash for this kind of extravagant affair, we say: why not? It will most likely be a pretty unforgettable, not to mention delicious, experience.

Recently, though, there has been some backlash to the tasting menu craze. Critics say that the dining experience has nothing to do with the consent, control, or opinion of the diner. Rather, it is a top-down affair: the glorified chef gets to call all the shots, while the diner falls victim to all of the whims of the restaurant staff from beginning to end. In a scathing Vanity Fair article aptly named “Tyranny – It’s What’s For Dinner“, Corby Kummer writes, ”a diner’s pleasure is secondary; subjugation to the will of the creative genius comes first, followed, eventually, but stultified stupefaction.” In other words, whatever happened to the age-old restaurant golden rule, “the customer comes first”?

Mavericks in the field of the tasting menu include El Bulli (Ferran Adrià) and French Laundry (Thomas Keller). A few of New York’s most well known spots are Eleven Madison Park and Per Se.  The most sought after new tasting menu joint is Blanca, the sister restaurant to the Roberta’s Pizza hotspot.

Pete Wells of the New York Times also shot down the tasting menu phenomenon with a harsh critique back in October. He described his experience at an unnamed tasting menu restaurant as less than pleasant: “the machine would operate for a fixed length of time, and my function would be to eat anything it produced until the gears stopped turning and I was allowed to leave.” The agency of the customer is all but gone – the only choice the customer has is to choose to go there in the first place – that and to spend 3 to 5 hours and hundreds of dollars on a meal.

Perhaps this is your only choice, but it is a crucial one.  We are not powerless when we are “subjected” to tasting menus, but rather we have willingly surrendered ourselves to the chef in excited anticipation for something unexpected and delicious.  The tasting menu, when done right, can be an ethereal, transportive experience that leaves diners in awe of a chef’s culinary genius.  Yes, it can be expensive, yes it can take a long time, and yes it can be executed poorly.  But so can going to a restaurant and ordering off the menu like we all do everyday.  As with any kind of experience, there is good and there is bad.

While some perceive the famous tasting menu at Eleven Madison Park as entirely pretentious, others find it to be an eye-opening, exceptional dining experience.  Ultimately, whether or not to spend $200 on a tasting menu is up to the diner.  To go as far to say we are submitting ourselves to the power of culinary “tyranny” may be a bit dramatic since it all begins with a choice made by the diner.  As Chef David Kinch of California’s Monresa put it in Eater’s article on the subject, “The fact of the matter is, you choose where you go to eat. No one is making you go into the place, spend that amount of money, and sit through only one long menu against your will.”

Whenever there is a popular trend, in food culture or elsewhere, there is bound to be some sort of backlash involved.  Elevating chefs to stardom and giving them creative control isn’t the worst thing in the world.  Neither is being forced to try crazy new foods as opposed to the same old thing you always order.  As proponents of alternative and experiential dining, we admire creativity and encourage diners to adventure outside their comfort zone, but we are also aware that there are many ways to enjoy food in new and different ways other than a pricey 40-course tasting menu.  The are endless possibilities and options, and the tasting menu is merely one of them.