3rd February 2023 – (Hong Kong) Restaurants in Hong Kong have always taken advantage of festive seasons such as Christmas celebration and New Year countdown to charge exorbitant prices. Customers usually have to folk out thousands of dollars to order generic set dinner courses during the ‘special occasions’. As the Valentine’s Day is approaching, many restaurant operators are frantically coming up with promotions to lure men to book expensive dinners to impress their other halves or dates.
Recently, an Italian restaurant called Estro (Italian for ‘inspiration’) under Jia Group led by Executive Chef Antimo Maria offered a Chef’s Table Dining Experience located inside Estro’s kitchens for Valentine’s Day. The Chef’s Table experience will debut with an exclusive Valentine’s Day Experiential Dining Package priced at a whopping HK$16,800 + 10% service charge per couple. According to the restaurant, this one-of-a-kind dining package is inclusive of a full 8-course seasonal dégustation menu that is personally prepared and explained in detail by Executive Chef Antimo Maria Merone himself, in addition to round-trip limousine transportation, a stunning bouquet of fresh flowers, one bottle of Krug Rosé, and a farewell gift of homemade chocolates. It sounds impressive, but spending close to HK$20,000 on a meal shows how extravagant a person is and during bad times, this is not the kind of man you want to be with. Furthermore, Estro is only a Michelin recommended restaurant and it has no stars.
Even though the menu may sound fancy and the chef will put in all his efforts to reap as much profits as possible from the customers, a man should show his love to his other half not by flaunting his spending power but instead, he should spend time cooking for his other half. One could argue that it’s not intimate or special to boil water, throw pasta in a pot, put whatever your preferred sauce is on top and stuff it in your face in silence next to the person you made it with. The reality is, though, you just don’t make food with people you don’t love. According to Tess Koman in an article published on Delish, even something as simple as making a meal that takes all of five minutes—eggs! sandwiches! leftovers!—is special when you hand it to someone topped with the perfect amount of their favourite hot sauce or heat it up for their preferred 48 seconds. You can definitely invite your date or partner to a chef’s table dining experience but it will be more worthwhile if the chef is you and not some Michelin-star chefs unless you want your other half to fall in love with the chef. The gesture of making food you know your partner will like, regardless of the effort it takes, isn’t one you can replicate by paying tens of thousands for dinner or buying an Hermes bag, Chanel or LV scarves or whatever it is you buy someone for Valentine’s Day in 2023. Sure, that’ll all make someone happy when it comes to their next Instagram post’s engagement, but it will leave them empty emotionally and physically unless you are dating a gold-digger!
