Another problem worth noting is that jus, like gravy, dribbles off the roofing slate that serves as a plate..
I have! From Raffles Hotel in Singapore, to Gleneagles in Scotland, with a few upmarket pretenstaurants in Dubai and USA too. I'll agree with you that the food is good - but not my "thing". I just don't find all the poshness conducive to a nice relaxing experience, and it actually winds me up that people are throwing so much money at a single meal while people not too far away are starving (and I don't normally have much of a social conscience about such matters). Any time I've been to these places it's only because I've been in slightly more upmarket company; I would normally give them a wide berth.
Have to say none of those appeals at all, but I did once go on a works Christmas do to Bibendum in London (which, googling has just revealed, has a set menu for £115 a head - and that's not including Tizer), and it was wonderful. Almost more than the food I remember the service, which was perfect: genuinely friendly without being in any way nauseating, highly efficient, and almost supernaturally attentive - never any hint of intrusion, much less fishing for compliments, essentially invisible the vast majority of the time, and yet whenever you felt you might like something, someone was just suddenly, inexplicably, there to provide it. So yes, not really my thing, but I do get it. (Unlike the OP, which does sound like pretentious nonsense for yuppies with more money than taste.)
