The press have been having a field day of late over revelations that some restaurateurs are now charging more than £100 a head. What's their problem? It's the choice of each restaurateur to decide their own pricing policy, and a free marketplace will soon vote with its feet if the prices are thought excessive.
Surely, the real question is whether a restaurant's prices represent value for money? £10 a head for an awful, microwaved pub meal can be deemed outrageously expensive in my mind. £100, or even more, for a truly great meal prepared with first-class ingredients and served with style could be considered great value. It all depends on what you get for your money.
The debate over restaurant prices was sparked with the publication of this year's Harden's London Restaurant Guide, which highlighted in an accompanying press release the fact that a handful of restaurants are now breaching the £100 barrier. The motivation for the press release was creating headlines to sell more guidebooks; it had nothing to do with reality.
Sinead Mallozzi, general manager at Sketch - one of the restaurants mentioned in the release - was berated in the Sunday Times recently for threatening to "set her doormen on the journalist's researchers".
It turns out that what she actually said was that she "would interrupt the researchers [who were asking intrusive questions] and personally escort her customers in".
Silvano Giraldin, matre d' at Le Gavroche, another restaurant highlighted for its prices, posed the question: "Are these restaurants full? And, if they are, then what's the problem?"
Giraldin said he recently spent more than £200 a head for a meal (excluding wine) at Parisian restaurant Guy Savoie, and claims he thought it was great value for what it was: a memorable experience.
Both he and Mallozzi point out that not all of their customers pay that kind of money. Le Gavroche has always offered a three-course lunch menu for about £45 a head, including half-bottles of wine and water, and coffee and petits fours to boot; and the vast majority of Sketch's customers frequent its Gallery gastro-brasserie, where spend averages about £50 a head.
Sketch employs £120 staff, while Le Gavroche has 60. Both restaurants pay top-notch Mayfair rents. It doesn't take an economist to work out that, in that scenario, £100 a head can easily become a reality. In fact, it starts to seem quite reasonable to me.
Over to you
Are restuarant prices running out of control?
Dominic Ford, Ford-McDonald Consultants
"I don't think restaurants are overpriced at all. You do get placces such as Sketch that are extremely expensive. But you also have top-end restaurants such as Gordon Ramsay's Maze or the Ledbury, which are very reasonable. In my experience, fashionable restaurants will get away with charging a lot but across the board this really isn't the case at all."
Gaby Huddart, editor, Square Meal restuarant guide
"Harden's headline-grabbing way of representing restaurant prices is unfair, misleading and inaccurate. Of course you can go to Uma and spend £250 a head, but you can also have its three-course set lunch at more affordable £22. There is such as massive range of restaurants out there that you really can choose how much you want to spend."
Matthew Fort, food editor, the Guardian
"Restaurants in London will allways be more expensive than in other parts of the country and this is the result of two things. On the one hand, restaurateurs in the capital have extra expenses, such as higher rents, rates, insurance and staff costs; but in the other, the London market justifies these prices as people are happy to pay them."
Jonathan Downey, owner, Match Bar Group
"If you want amazing food, you have to pay for it - it's as simple as that. But high prices also keep out 'restaurant tourists', who visit well-known eateries for the wrong reasons, such as celebrity spotting of telling their colleagues where they have been. Gastropubs, however, are charging too much these days."