I am in Chicago and a dear friend came up from LA to see me  we have been friends for 7 yrs  we met in LA....okay so he's very wealthy and a dear friend ...so he calls and says  i want to take you to this place  to eat "ALINEA" and it take weeks to book a reservation  so we did.....last night off we went  into  this ultra modern place very small and they do around 60  reservations  AND DINNER TAKE 3HRS  and they do a paring with wines......$250 a  person  it was  such a hoot   never saw anything  like it it was like a circus  show  19  different waiters each present their own course  and then you have the wine guys stopping bye  giving their  speech  ....it was hard to converse as we were always having to stop to listen to their speech on each course  OK it was very creative  but no real food  foams and nitro gas were used some glass tubes were filled  that you shot the course down  hardly any food  in fact left hungry I was craving a  big Mac  after  3 hrs plus......is this what happens to people that have way too much money to spend?  Just give me some good ol comfort food any day ......but it was fun and I will always remember this  date  fondly but will never do another one ......

not sure about everyone else, but I couldn't care less about "fine dining". Regardless of what that may or may not say about me, I still don't like it.
By no means, do I want to eat at Long John Silvers. However, give me a decent place with a portion that looks like more than a snack and I'm good. That said, places like Claim Jumper that put an entire cow on your plate are too much for me as well.

and did not mean to imply I would not do another date with him  just not into that type of eating  experience........something I would only try once .......

my experience was at the TI "Treasure Island" in Las Vegas. A few years ago, my exwife was invited to a wedding and the dinner the night before was overlooking the old ships battle sequence. We ordered either chicken steak or fish. After a 60minute wait out comes 3oz of chicken, 12 peas(I mean 12 peas, not ounces just 12 peas) and 2tablespoons of rice. Oh ya I was filled up! Soon as the dinner was over, I went to the nearest bar and took a bowl of pretzels with me to where the wedding party was playing blackjack. People within the party started calling me out on how undignified that was sitting at a blackjack table with a bowl of pretzels. I told them that it was scandalous to invite us for a $99 a plate meal and only get served what we received. Fine dining is great once in your life....... I've checked that one off my bucket list!

Hopefully I'll get to try it one of these days! The French Laundry in Yountville, CA is also on my list of "once in a lifetime" experiences!
I think I would like the artistic presentation...but I know what you mean! I like to feel as if I've eaten when I'm finished!

OMG Gina you have to go to Binkley's that is the only place I will dine at it's my reward after a fitness challenge, but this time of year he's booked out for about a month  and he closes for a month sometimes two months in the summer. If you're a true foody you have to experience it

I hate to wait! I get hungry fast. Feed me or else I get cranky. lol!

I will be in Phoenix in a couple of weeks and one of the things that I like to do is take a lady out on the town.  Now the particular menu item that I like to order is getting harder and harder to find, rocky mountain oysters.  I have eaten them ever since I can remember having grown up on a ranch.  Any restaurants serve them in Phoenix and if so any ladies want a great dinner?  Maybe not rich but different.

Rawhide Steakhouse will have your bull nuts, I don't know if they're as good as they are in Montana though

Ahhhh Bovinus Testiculous. Been a long time since I had some. Your right Montana has some good places to get some. Wyoming also has several places that serve good ones. It really is an acquired taste.

Acquired taste......serious?? Oh shit if I told you how I/we ate them I don't know if you would crap your pants or gag or both lol.

the first time I had mountain oysters was at the Rocky Mountain Oyster Club in Tucson... been many moons since that memorable night out.. don't know if the rules have changed since then, but at the time you had to have a net worth in excess of $1,000,000 in the agriculture industry, inflation being what it is, that is probably $10mm now.. I wasn't a member, but some friends took me... sat in the bar and ate oysters washed down by shots of tequila before dinner..

the men's restroom had a motion activated movie projector so when you bellied up to the urinal, it fired up and played porn movies on the wall while you drained the lizard... facility used to be this fabulous old hacienda in down town.. in door pool.. spiral staircase in spanish tile.. just an architectural smorgasbord of delightful detail..

the bar conversation was interesting.. one guy traded about $8mm of business from his table telephone that night, buying produce in mexico and selling it in canada and buying livestock in canada and selling it in california.. another guy was sitting with three gorgeous women whining about how his trip out west was all fucked up because he was side railed in chicago by a snow storm for three days and had to spend it in his daddy's private pulman with the blondes and a wet bar and hot tub.. it was a window on a world I had never known exited...

thanks for re-igniting those memories... don't normally dwell on the past and focus on the future but it was just kinda pavlovian at the mention of rocky mountain oysters..

would love to do a repeat with a hot provider hanging off each arm

the first time I had mountain oysters was at the Rocky Mountain Oyster Club in Tucson... been many moons since that memorable night out.. don't know if the rules have changed since then, but at the time you had to have a net worth in excess of $1,000,000 in the agriculture industry, inflation being what it is, that is probably $10mm now.. I wasn't a member, but some friends took me... sat in the bar and ate oysters washed down by shots of tequila before dinner..

the men's restroom had a motion activated movie projector so when you bellied up to the urinal, it fired up and played porn movies on the wall while you drained the lizard... facility used to be this fabulous old hacienda in down town.. in door pool.. spiral staircase in spanish tile.. just an architectural smorgasbord of delightful detail..

the bar conversation was interesting.. one guy traded about $8mm of business from his table telephone that night, buying produce in mexico and selling it in canada and buying livestock in canada and selling it in california.. another guy was sitting with three gorgeous women whining about how his trip out west was all fucked up because he was side railed in chicago by a snow storm for three days and had to spend it in his daddy's private pulman with the blondes and a wet bar and hot tub.. it was a window on a world I had never known exited...

thanks for re-igniting those memories... don't normally dwell on the past and focus on the future but it was just kinda pavlovian at the mention of rocky mountain oysters..

would love to do a repeat with a hot provider hanging off each arm

you can't really profess to be from Montana unless you castrated lambs with your teeth...

No need for teeth when there's simple and more effective modern technology.  Just Google "elastrator"