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Dough à la Mode
I recently grabbed a quick bite at Bar Masa, in the new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. The bar has a short menu, so ordering was simple. The waiter proposed a plate of assorted sashimi at $85. I accepted. Sea-eel tempura sounded like a nice way to start off, and corn croquettes, in a Japanese restaurant, seemed weird but interesting. My eye wandered to an Asian-style risotto of lobster and black truffles. Irresistible, so why resist? -- although $34 was pushing the upper limit on what was, when you got down to it, a glorified bar menu. The bill for two, with no dessert and no drinks, was about $200.

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Spending that kind of money on an abbreviated dinner should have elicited at least a twinge of guilt. Two hundred dollars, for the average American struggling to make do in tough times, is no small thing. I did some soul-searching but found that my only regret was not getting a table next door at Masa, where the owner and chef, Masa Takayama, creates menuless meals of five appetizers and a 15-fish main course. The price is $300 per diner.

In nearly five years of reviewing restaurants for this newspaper, I spent that much, and sometimes more, on dinner. Invariably, the ensuing review, with its heartfelt evocations of foie gras, caviar, Kobe beef, truffles and Champagne, would provoke outrage in a certain class of reader. The letters, and occasionally the voice-mail messages, all expressed the same sentiment: How could you? In a world where millions of children go hungry, where famine haunts broad swaths of Africa and Asia, where the $200 spent on a bottle of Bordeaux could go far to alleviating a destitute family's misery -- how could you?

I wanted to feel guilt. Honestly, I did. But among the many emotions I experienced as a reviewer -- happiness, annoyance, amusement, boredom, bliss, rage -- guilt never figured. I was more likely to get worked up over the price of parking in a garage than I was at the $150 for a splash of 19th-century Madeira or the $50 extra for a sprinkling of white truffles. Parking garages perform a function, but truffles delight the palate, a much higher calling. Unfortunately, in the United States, where even serial killers are considered innocent until proved otherwise, all sorts of harmless pleasures are routinely described as guilty.

May I mount a defense? Most arguments against fine dining as frivolous, excessive and somehow morally wrong rest on one of two propositions, both of them false....