As wedding season approaches, the save-the-dates and the wedding invitations begin to trickle in.  As someone who is constantly working to find new and interesting things to write about in the relatively unchanging world of weddings, I like to investigate the venues that people choose for their weddings.  In doing so, I often uncover information about the cost of food and the venue itself that allow my wife and I to plan our gift accordingly.  A lot of wedding venues aren’t well known, especially if a wedding is taking place in a different state, and it is useful to know about the venue, its history, and things that are nearby.

For one invitation, the exact description of the food that was being offered was not on the invitation.  Instead of saying something specific such as “Chicken Parmesan,” the invitation only stated “Chicken,” a description that is almost too vague to be useful in any way outside of letting vegetarians know that the dish does not fit their dietary needs.  Wanting to know what I would be eating if I marked the nebulous “Chicken” selection, I obtained the menu of the wedding venue and began looking.  There were actually four different chicken dishes on the menu, a grilled version, a roasted version, a marsala version, and one that came with a lemon sauce.  All of the choices seemed pretty straight forward and simple.  And then I saw the prices.  For the roasted chicken, the cost was a touch over $130 while for the one with the lemon sauce, the cost was a touch under $130.  The other two dishes were in this same range.  This price seemed absurd for almost any dish, much less a chicken dish.

The following puts the approximately $130 dish into perspective:

According to this site, I could purchase 30 heirloom chickens, raise them, and then eat them for a cost that, if done properly, should come out to approximately $3.50 per pound.  This would require some work, however, $3.50 per pound isn’t that bad for chicken, especially chicken that was raised in a way which guaranteed no harmful chemicals or antibiotics were being used and allowed the chickens to run around the way they would in nature.  Based on the site’s figures, 76 pounds of chicken meat would be produced by the 30 heirloom chickens.  Grocery stores routinely sell chicken for somewhere between $0.99 per pound and $5.00 per pound, depending on a variety of factors, which makes the $3.50 per pound relatively reasonable.

With the information about what it would cost to raise chickens in a completely organic and cage-free manner, the approximately $130 per dish cost on the wedding menu becomes a lot more absurd.  First, even if the venue gave every guest a pound of organic chicken, or even a whole chicken, the difference between the actual cost of the chicken and the cost of the dish would still be immense.  In addition, the chicken dishes do not involve incredibly expensive ingredients that would cause the total cost of the dish to be high.  One of the selections on the menu was “Chicken alla Griglia.”  The preparation of the dish will vary slightly, however, the basic ingredients involved include lemon, garlic, oil, vinegar (rice or white wine), and various spices including rosemary, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, and oregano, items that are most likely in the majority of well-stocked kitchens and are relatively easy and inexpensive to purchase.  This particular dish also came with seasonal vegetables, which, in general, aren’t very costly, or at least not costly enough to justify an approximately $130 per plate price.  Based on all of this information, it is abundantly evident that this particular wedding venue either has an incredibly wealthy clientele that doesn’t care about price (or is not observant enough to notice the price) or has somehow managed to outsmart all of its customers into thinking that a little bit of chicken and vegetables is actually worth approximately $130.

For those familiar with the food world, Chef Paul Bocuse is a living legend.  Some books will have covers that say “New York Times Bestseller”; his cookbooks say “Chef of the Century.”  I have been lucky enough to eat at his restaurant, L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges.  If you were to go and have his “Menu Grande Tradition Classique,” a seven or eight course meal, depending on how you distinguish between the dessert portion, it would cost 260€ per person.  As of the publication of this post, 1 US Dollar is the equivalent of about .9€ with some variance depending on the day.  This conversion would mean that the cost of the meal would come out to be $288.88, approximately $290.  While this is a very pricey meal, it is taking place at the restaurant of a living legend who has had a 3 Michelin star restaurant for longer than many people have been alive.

When the cost of a multi-course meal at the restaurant of arguably the greatest living chef is considered, paying approximately $130 for a single chicken dish at a wedding seems even more absurd.  That single chicken dish is 45% of the cost of a seven or eight course meal at one of the top restaurants in the world.  The wedding venue will not be taking great care on each dish as tens or even hundreds of the same dish need to come out at the same time.  The techniques required to keep things warm and produce such large quantities of food to be served at once inherently work against quality.  These factors all contribute to the production of a glaring example of the incredible gluttony, greed, and audacity that some venues have when it comes to outrageous prices for what is almost always average food.

 

 

 

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