Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Going to eat out? pay-what-you-like policy restaurant

Cynthetiq · 03-14-2005, 10:10 AM

What would you do? Would you feel comfortable with this? Do you read the menu from right to left, scanning prices first then picking from the "right amounts"?

Based on our normal spending habits, I normally like to only spend $30-$40 for the Skogafoss and I to go out to dinner, that's an 2 entree, 2 desert, and 1 coffee. I don't have any issue with just putting the funds down that I think is fair. I try to not look at the prices of things as I try to let my desires get tempered by pricing, not decided by it. So if I find that I want it, I decide if the vendor's price is fair and if not, I'll not order it.

Obviously if I ordered something that I know had a higher value then I'd be more inclined to leave more.

Quote:

CHECK, PLEASE!
Issue of 2005-03-21
Posted 2005-03-14
LINK
Diners browsing their options on Macdougal Street who happened upon a restaurant called Babu in its first few weeks of opening, earlier this year, were met with several surprises. The first was the incongruity of finding a place like Babu—which is candlelit and hushed—in a strip of the Village better known for falafels and Formica tables. The second was the unfamiliarity of the cuisine, which comes from Calcutta and draws upon the traditions of the many different ethnic groups that have made that city their home, from the Chinese (shrimp toasts with sesame) to the Muslim (mutton cooked with yogurt) to the Bengali (fish steamed with mustard and green chili, wrapped in a banana leaf) to the British (fish-and-chips).

The third surprise was that the menu came without prices. Instead, guests were invited to eat, enjoy, and then, at the end of the meal, pay what they thought it was worth. “I’d rather work out the kinks in the kitchen first,” Payal Saha, the restaurant’s owner, explained the other day, sitting at a corner table of Babu, which was about a quarter full of couples quietly eating and mentally calculating the value of their experience.

Saha, who is thirty and a native of Calcutta, moved to New York from Bombay in 2000 with her husband, who works in advertising and also serves as Babu’s informal maître d’. “I don’t have the money to hire topline staff, so everyone has to learn,” Saha said. “And it leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths if they have to pay and things don’t go right.” (The wine and liquor list does come with prices, and a check is delivered for them.) “I have assumed that everyone will pay me zero,” she said.

The pay-what-you-like policy has caused a certain amount of anxiety among diners, much as the pay-what-you-wish policy at, say, the Metropolitan Museum can cause crises of conscience in the face of a ticket-taking docent’s all-knowing gaze. Only the gauche or exploitative would interpret such an invitation as an opportunity to feed for free; the problem, for the civilized remainder, is the lack of an established code of behavior to follow. The standard meaning, in movies and cartoons, at least, of a missing price tag—if you have to ask, you can’t afford it—is clearly not the governing principle at Babu; but figuring out what the governing principle is is rather like trying to determine the correct size of a doorman’s Christmas tip. Should diners permit themselves a discount in exchange for being experimented upon, even if the experiment was pleasurable? (Did Pavlov’s dogs feel bad about enjoying the food they got in exchange for salivating on demand?) Or should diners show their appreciation for Saha’s humility with a reciprocal gesture of effusiveness? Totalling up imagined prices can certainly take up a good portion of the meal, and if you happen to appreciate Babu’s culinary adventurousness it is quite possible to conclude an evening at table with a consensus, over the do-it-yourself check, that the place is excellent but a little expensive.

“The no-prices menu puts people on the spot, and a lot of people got free meals,” said Ursila Jung, a friend of Saha who has been helping out. A rowdy group of ten young Indians walked in one Friday evening and occupied the restaurant’s large central table. Their response to no prices was to leave no money; they didn’t even tip the wait staff.

Other diners have been irrepressibly generous. “We had one couple who paid two hundred bucks for an eighty-dollar meal,” Saha said. (When customers overpay, Saha tries to persuade them to take some money back; none, so far, have accepted.) She admits that there is a “moment of awkwardness” when the no-prices policy is explained. “After that, some people order more food than you think they might have and some order less,” she said. “We talked to some people before sending them their check, asking if they would pay fifty dollars for this meal,” Jung said. “The people mostly said yes, except for one couple from Minneapolis. They were shocked at that price.”

Saha says that the experiment had its stresses for her as well. While she has enjoyed circulating among the tables as her guests ate, she said, “I run into the kitchen as soon as the check comes. It’s really hard for me, and it’s really hard for them.” A few weeks ago, prices were finally written into the menu: a three-course meal with wine comes to about fifty dollars a head. The value of having someone else do the math is, as MasterCard might put it, priceless.

— Rebecca Mead