In 2013, sautéed mushrooms at Minetta Tavern cost $14 and an arugula side salad at Marea was $11. Today, the Minetta mushrooms are, admirably, $18, but Marea’s salad is up to $22. The 100 percent increase far outpaces the rate of inflation — but it also puts the arugula’s pricing right alongside a number of dining destinations where the contorni have officially passed the $20 threshold, a psychological Rubicon that few chefs would have crossed even five years ago.
Cost-conscious operators have long leaned on sides and skillful upselling to boost check averages, but — like nearly every other expense associated with running a restaurant — rising prices have forced restaurateurs’ hands, so side dishes now come with supplements of their own. An $18 serving of fries at Daniel Boulud’s La Tête d’Or becomes $35 fries with the addition of optional black truffle, for example. “You have to be smart and utilize everything,” says Brendan Scott, executive chef at the new Golden Steer steakhouse, where a side of mac and cheese — cavatappi pasta baked in a sharp cheddar Mornay sauce — is $17, or $22 when upgraded to a “prime” version topped with dry-aged beef trimmings in brandied veal jus. His diners, as he sees it, have arrived at a restaurant selling $225 50-ounce porterhouses because they’re looking to splurge. “Often someone else is paying,” Scott says. “So why not?”
Of course, for many chefs, the need to raise prices is unavoidable, and the goal is to deliver a sense of value, not pure profit. At Tao Group’s Crane Club, chef Melissa Rodriguez leans into live fire cooking in the “Vegetables” section of the menu, adding touches like guanciale and dry-aged beef fat to a $25 potato rosti. “I don’t look at the vegetable part of the menu as traditional side dishes,” says Rodriguez. “I wanted them to be stand-alone dishes.” A $20 plate of sprouting cauliflower with anchovy, pine nuts, and mint could easily pass as an appetizer somewhere else.
Mushrooms, too, quickly become cost-prohibitive. At José Andrés’s Bazaar Meat, mushrooms “al ajillo” — in garlicky chicken jus with raw egg yolk — are $24. And Rodriguez charges $23 for wood-grilled trumpet mushrooms at Crane Club, a price she says accounts for how much weight mushrooms lose as they’re cooked. “Mushrooms are like spinach,” she says. “You can buy a five-pound bag of spinach and sauté it down to like a cup.” She estimates her mushrooms lose “probably around 40 percent” of their weight when they’re placed over heat.
In fact, mushrooms lose so much weight during cooking that Jorge Espinoza, the executive corporate chef at Scarpetta, had to take them off the menu entirely. “How can you serve mushrooms on the side when it’s going to be more expensive than your sirloin?” he says. Still, he charges $22 for sides of charred broccolini with garlic chips and lemon or spiced heirloom carrots with yogurt. He hardly has a choice these days. “Sometimes you pay $20 for a case of broccolini,” he says, “and the next day you see the invoice and it’s $40 for a case.”
This post has been updated to correct Jorge Espinoza’s title.
