...Lunch!

The Morris Culinary Ostentation Index:

• Restaurants will charge about 30% more for food if it's festooned with squiggly sauces of some sort (presumably they've found a use for the surplus catsup bottles in the back).
• If the squiggles run in two directions, then the surcharge is about 43%.
• Food that's artificially constructed into a higher fractal order (that is, sculpted into tree-like thingies that stick up off the plate) add about another 73.5% on top of the first two.
• Finally, if there's gold leaf on any of it you'd better have American Express because the Visa's going to melt into slag.
• More than one adjective per menu item and the price rises commensurate with the ostentation as well.

So -- Hypothesize a basic cheeseburger and fries: $7.50

Squiggly Sauce -- 1 direction: $9.75

Squiggly Sauce -- 2 directions: $10.75

Three dimensional sculpted version: $18.60

"Boeuf carbonée avec moutarde et tomato-vinaigrette sauce sur le pain, pommes frites et un petit gherkin" : $48.75

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Today's Example:



"Instead of the classic French ham and cheese sandwich, Hatfield's crafts its "croque-madame" ($18) out of cool slices of hamachi layered with salty prosciutto and buttery toasted brioche. The final topping is a quail egg fried sunny-side up. "

From the New York Times travel section -- "Los Angeles's Revived Culinary Scene" (10/1/08)




Yes, that's a ham sandwich the size of a quarter, with a marble-sized egg on top... for $18.