Ed Levine started Serious Eats, a food community based in NY. Ed is also a hot dog fanatic, publishing his guide to NY’s best hot dogs.

So what happens when Ed goes to Per Se, Thomas Keller’s ultra high-end restaurant (and one of the best in the world)? Well, first, he wasn’t so sure about the price:

I had posted shortly before I left the house about my doubts about spending $210 on lunch when I knew I could eat at Gray’s Papaya [home of delicious hot dogs] every day for 2 1/2 months for the same tariff.

So off he goes, a bit skeptical. The experience is good, until…

About eight courses in, halfway through the meal, our waiter brought out a beautiful silver tray… I started to crack up, as did our waiters. Someone in Keller’s organization had obviously been reading my blog, somebody with a sense of humor…. a world-class fancy-pants restaurant with the ability to laugh at itself is a rare find indeed.

[See what the folks at Per Se did to make Ed's experience so awesome]

Ed has a followup about meeting Thomas Keller on the Per Se kitchen tour after they finished the meal.

More about Per Se

Per Se on Wikipedia
Reserve a table at Per Se
Service Included is a book about the culture of service at Per Se written by Phoebe Damrosch, a former server there