Return To The Gilded Age

 It was bound to happen. Blame it on the popular HBO series "The Gilded Age" or Trump's tarting out the White House to resemble a gaudy Newport summer home. What is this trend?Restaurants offering glitzy and lush dishes in a time when most are struggling.

Regular contributor and chef ,herself, Julia Moskin wrote about this in Wednesday's New York Times Food section.Despite the economic downturn and food struggles of a very large portion of Americans,Manhattan eateries are featuring recipes that would be very in place in Julian Fellowes HBO series about the real life Astors s and Vanderbilts and the fictional Van Rhijn family. Silver paplates across the city are suddenly discovering the lush and sometimes delicate flavors of foie gras, Dover sole and seafood towers, the last chock full of the Gilded Age favorite  - oysters,flanked by shrimp and lobster. There are also towers featuring hipper tastes like crudo)seafood drenched with olive oil and citrus juice like ceviche)toro fatty bluefin and the best cut of the fish and uni - sea urchins. The restaurant Le Grande Boucherie is offering a suckling costing $600 (!!!!). The Waldorf Astoria's refurbished restaurant Lex is offering a sixty-eight dollar lobster covered with caviar and truffles.

There have always been rich people spending exorbitant amounts of cash on food yet today that spending is reaching dizzying heights.Expensive places to eat just aren't in Manhattan anymore. Travel to  Dallas, Las Vegas, Miami and Aspen and order truffles or  Wagyu beef. Parc in Aspen offers celebrities and millionaires offers the last at $120 a plate while a simple dish of polenta with oyster mushrooms and afarm egg(??) is twenty-eight dollars.It seems lesser prices restaurants are jumping on this trend too.Some are pairing caviar with potato chips or even chicken nuggets at Cocodaq, an innovative Korean restaurant in Manhattan's Flatiron district.  This last sold the combo for one hundred bucks a box!!! last summer at the US Open. It's no secret that most of the country can barely afford groceries let alone expensive nuggets. EConomists are calling it "K shaped economy with two tren likes diverging in opposite directions. Income and net worth have risen rapidly for the one percent, namely those working in the tech business. The less affluent are the victims of a stagnant economy and inflation. Yet offering high priced meals with extravagant ingredients are the only way to stay afloat according to pastry chef and partial owner of Manhattan restaurant Contra, Fabian Von Hauske Valtiera.

There will always be be the rich. They need to eat too. Yet they do it in disregard to what is happening around them.It seems eateries are for them these days.not the hardworking American.