One dozen bottles plus a magnum of Champagne at $150 per bottle corkage for a special lunch at La Grenouille.

I am in the middle of putting together a 1998 Pomerol lunch. Nine Pomerols plus a few complementary wines to make up a dozen. Looking for a private or semi private room, and decided to look at one of New York’s original French restaurants, La Grenouille. A sommelier friend will decant, so all the restaurant needs to do is to provide glassware and a spit bucket. But said services will cost $150 per bottle. Throw in a magnum of Champagne ($300) and the corkage fee comes to $2100.

I have to say I nearly fell off my chair, and I am afraid I started to laugh. I do hope La Grenouille has a loyal clientele, and they can afford to lose a dozen people for a Friday lunch, many of whom have never been there. Of course they can charge what they like, but can’t think of a less welcoming policy.

Ouch. Some restaurants get it. This one, clearly not.

Some restaurants design high corkage fees, escalating corkage fees and/or per-table limits just for the purpose of discouraging these kinds of wine group offlines.

I’m not defending it (though of course it’s entirely their right), nor do I really understand it, but I think some restaurants just don’t like having this kind of event taking place in their restaurant. Maybe they had a few bad experiences with that kind of group, maybe they don’t want the look and vibe of that in the restaurant, whatever.

I find it puzzling, but, like Mark, I just kind of laugh and take my business somewhere that wants it. Fortunately, in California at least, there are usually plenty of those.

You would think they would be keen to attract this sort of qualified clientele.

Old school Upper-East-Sider kind of haunt. I put them in the same category as Nello.

Sometimes you kiss a frog and it stays a frog :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Hal

Nice post and have been with a regular tasting group for over a year that has already run into this issue (not on the level on OP). Would is it a staffing thing as well?

This is a very common problem in San Francisco - just not many spaces that work for a group wine dinner, and even fewer that want us there. Some block events with a very high minimum or escalating corkage, some just say no. My guess is that the restaurants are in general over crowded and just don’t need the business. Happily there are a handful of restaurants that welcome us (especially if we are going on a Monday or Tuesday, historically slow nights). We visit these frequently!

champagne.gif

It appears your event was unwelcome, certainly NOT a diplomatic “NO”!

Perhaps, Mark, you could recommend a charm school for their continuing education!

'98 Pomerol, great tasting!

I would prefer a restaurant to say there is no corkage. This is just insulting, but apparently the restaurant is proud of its wine list.

But there is corkage, it’s just not something you would want to pay. Almost certainly, if you were to order the same bottles off a traditional restaurant wine list, the restaurant would receive a profit in excess of $150/bottle (resataurant wine list pricing is a wholly separate topic). So while I wouldn’t want to have a wine event there, from the restaurant’s point of view, it is “logical” if not particularly welcoming, especially when you factor in that they almost certainly will not turn your table at lunch because the wine lunch will go on for several hours.

No hate, just another perspective.

try Benoit

Broken down, that’s ~$12.50 per glass per person with wine service by a somm and I’m guessing a decanter for some of those wines, and a spit bucket. Plus someone will hand wash those delicate glasses.
If the restaurant is busy enough to pack those 12 seats with asses on Friday and sell wine from the list (or charge corkage) it seems to make perfect sense.

Seems highly unlikely they’re selling that much wine on a Friday lunch to make that a good exchange. Seems like it could be more a rigid adherence to the established pricing structure without actually considering the economics. Never know though.

Friday lunch after Memorial Day is basically dead.

A few thoughts. A friend is in charge of decanting ( a couple of the more backward wines will probably be double decanted before we leave). We will probably be bringing our own decanters.

A couple of friends will be pouring, so the total amount of work is providing and polishing 36 glasses and three spit buckets. For convenience, I am assigning $50 per bucket which means each glass is $51.88. Assuming that one can wash and polish said glasses in two hours, the restaurant is making over $900 an hour for polishing glasses.

Not bad for a dead lunch period.

Yeah, that’s what I don’t get. A restaurant has every right to refuse corkage, and has every right to say no to big wine dinners even where corkage is allowed. The latter is more understandable to me than the former, but in either event, it is the restaurant’s call. But why they don’t just say “no” is a mystery. Who is going to pay that?

The most nonsensical corkage story I experienced was at EMP years ago under the Danny Meyer regime, and when Daniel Humm was cooking there. At the time, you were allowed to bring X number of bottles, after which you had to pay an additional “dedicated sommelier fee.” Maybe $300? Don’t recall exactly. Okay, we got it - John Regan was the somm at the time and very good, lots of work for the restaurant, etc.

So we followed the rules, brought the correct number of bottles, and also bought a $1500 bottle of the list.

When dinner was over, and very good, one diner pulled a 375 of very old Yquem out of his bag - I think from the 20’s. We asked politely if we could open it ourselves, use the glasses we already had on the table and pour a small glass each. The answer was a firm "yes, but then you’d have to pay the “dedicated sommelier fee.”

So we’d, what, retroactively get a dedicated sommelier for the evening?

They were in the right to want to enforce their policy, but it made zero sense under the circumstances.

That’s what I’ve been told by people ITB - that most restaurants loathe the wine snobs - and given some of the shockingly anti-social behavior I’ve seen out of certain wine snobs, I can completely understand the sentiment.

PS: Opening 1998 Pomerol in 2020 is pure rank infanticide.

Although I suppose you could argue that the infants will be sound asleep, so maybe they won’t have to suffer through the pain of it.

I get it. They want to insure that people aren’t casually bringing wine. You have to really want to open that special bottle to pay $150 corkage. If you are bringing a bottle of 1998 Trotanoy it is much cheaper to pay $150 than purchase off the list, I bet.

They probably don’t want to have these kinds of events which is fair enough. There are plenty of places that do.

I’m interested to see the results. We did a broader (and I’m sure lower end) 1998 revisited dinner a couple years ago and there were a couple of real surprises.