How does this sound for dinner: 20 courses, all creatively and delicately crafted, with everything from entrees like goose breast cured for 17 months and steelhead trout with strawberries to wildly inventive desserts of white oak acorns cooked in walnut sap. No, it's not the menu from some ritzy Paris restaurant or a boutique in Los Angeles, but for most people, it's even farther out of reach. It's not just that the price is prohibitive; it's that you have to wait about five years to get a table. The unusual eatery sits in the basement of a house on a 12-acre farm in Upstate New York, and it's the pride of Damon Baehrel, who harvests nearly everything he serves. The Hudson Valley restaurant (also called Damon Baheel) only has 26 seats, and because Baehrel does most of the work -- including the dishwashing -- he usually serves meals only four days a week to groups of between six and 16. And while the meals typically cost between $350 and $425 USD per person, the waiting list goes on and on. Part of that might be because of Baehrel's passion for what he does -- and has been doing for more than 30 years. "Because of the dining guests coming here all these years, it’s the reason I’ve been able to live my life this way, and I really feel like the luckiest person in the world," he told Hudson Valley magazine.
Dig into some fine dining facts:
- Fine dining can be traced to the French Revolution, when suddenly unemployed chefs got together to create places where the proletariat could finally enjoy good food.
- The Bawabet Dimashq Restaurant in Damascus, Syria, is considered the world's largest eatery, with 6,014 seats in a 580,000-square-foot (53,884 square meter) location.
- The busiest day at most fine-dining restaurants is Mother's Day.