John Kenney writes in the New Yorker about his experiences dining at Masa (a high-end N.Y. Sushi Restaurant)
You do not seize control at Masa. You surrender it. You pay to be putty. And you pay dearly. . . . Lunch or dinner for two can easily exceed $1,000.
From the Times review of Masa, a sushi restaurant that was given four stars.
They arrive exactly one minute and twenty-four seconds late for their reservation:
The maitre d did not look happy. And so we were asked, in Japanese, to remove our clothes, in separate dressing cabins, and don simple white robes with Japanese writing on the back that, we soon found out, translated as �We were late. We didn't respect the time of others. Babette's feet were bound. I was forced to wear shoes that were two sizes too small. The point being, tardiness is not accepted at Masa. (Nor, frankly, should it be.)
The headwaiter then greeted us by slapping me in the face and telling Babette that she looked heavy, also in Japanese. (No English is spoken in the restaurant. Translators are available for hire for three hundred and twenty-five dollars per hour. We opted for one.)
And so it was that Babette, Aki, and I were led to our table, one of only seven in the restaurant, two of which are always reserved - one for former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who died five years ago, and the other for the actress and singer Claudine Longet, who accidentally shot and killed her boyfriend, the skier Spider Sabich, in 1976.
Hilarious stuff - I have been to places (almost) like that...
