In 2013, sautéed mushrooms at Minetta Tavern price $14 and an arugula facet salad at Marea was $11. At the moment, the Minetta mushrooms are, admirably, $18, however Marea’s salad is as much as $22. The 100% enhance far outpaces the speed of inflation — but it surely additionally places the arugula’s pricing proper alongside a variety of eating locations the place the contorni have formally handed the $20 threshold, a psychological Rubicon that few cooks would have crossed even 5 years in the past.
Price-conscious operators have lengthy leaned on sides and skillful upselling to spice up examine averages, however — like almost each different expense related to working a restaurant — rising costs have pressured restaurateurs’ palms, so facet dishes now include dietary supplements of their very own. An $18 serving of fries at Daniel Boulud’s La Tête d’Or turns into $35 fries with the addition of non-obligatory black truffle, for instance. “You must be good and make the most of every part,” says Brendan Scott, govt chef on the new Golden Steer steakhouse, the place a facet of mac and cheese — cavatappi pasta baked in a pointy cheddar Mornay sauce — is $17, or $22 when upgraded to a “prime” model topped with dry-aged beef trimmings in brandied veal jus. His diners, as he sees it, have arrived at a restaurant promoting $225 50-ounce porterhouses as a result of they’re trying to splurge. “Usually another person is paying,” Scott says. “So why not?”
After all, for a lot of cooks, the necessity to elevate costs is unavoidable, and the purpose is to ship a way of worth, not pure revenue. At Tao Group’s Crane Membership, chef Melissa Rodriguez leans into stay fireplace cooking within the “Greens” part of the menu, including touches like guanciale and dry-aged beef fats to a $25 potato rosti. “I don’t take a look at the vegetable a part of the menu as conventional facet dishes,” says Rodriguez. “I needed them to be stand-alone dishes.” A $20 plate of sprouting cauliflower with anchovy, pine nuts, and mint may simply go as an appetizer some other place.
Mushrooms, too, rapidly grow to be cost-prohibitive. At José Andrés’s Bazaar Meat, mushrooms “al ajillo” — in garlicky hen jus with uncooked egg yolk — are $24. And Rodriguez prices $23 for wood-grilled trumpet mushrooms at Crane Membership, a value she says accounts for the way a lot weight mushrooms lose as they’re cooked. “Mushrooms are like spinach,” she says. “You should purchase a five-pound bag of spinach and sauté it down to love a cup.” She estimates her mushrooms lose “in all probability round 40 p.c” of their weight once they’re positioned over warmth.
In actual fact, mushrooms lose a lot weight throughout cooking that Jorge Espinoza, the chief company chef at Scarpetta, needed to take them off the menu solely. “How are you going to serve mushrooms on the facet when it’s going to be costlier than your sirloin?” he says. Nonetheless, he prices $22 for sides of charred broccolini with garlic chips and lemon or spiced heirloom carrots with yogurt. He hardly has a alternative as of late. “Typically you pay $20 for a case of broccolini,” he says, “and the subsequent day you see the bill and it’s $40 for a case.”
This publish has been up to date to appropriate Jorge Espinoza’s title.
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