They should just charge a corkage fee.

$414 dinner bill. If she's not Mia Farrow with her 20 adoptees, fuck them all.

I'd be having a serious talk with the server who said this was okay.

The problem might be that other diners would assume that the Big Gulps were some high-concept menu item and order them for themselves. But then again that would probably only happen in NYC.

OMG. No Big Gulps. No Coke. No brown-bagging. And no calling ahead for permission.

If you are so fucking precious that you can't work with what's available at the restaurant, then stay the fuck home.

P.S. Take a large glass, fill it half with water, fill the other half with sugar, and presto, there's your goddamn Big Gulp. Don't forget your insulin shot!

I think if you're paying $100 a person (I'm assuming her "family" is 4 people; I assume I'm in the right ballpark, anyhow), you should be committing to the dining experience on offer. You're not paying $100 a person for simple nutrition!

I can understand the notion of bringing your own beverage to the table. After all, I hear it's not uncommon at extremely fancy restaurants for the customers to bring a rare wine with them. I suppose the same could apply for Two-Buck-Chuck, or for Coca-Cola, or even for bottled water. Still, this family and the other customers are paying through the nose for a complete dining experience, one that could be impaired by garish Big Gulp containers melting in the sun. I assume that a restaurant running to $100 a person offers excellent service and could make accommodations - providing a carafe and glasses, for example, would have solved the problem nicely, and they could have charged for the use or just expected the inconvenience to be rewarded in the tip.

I like the idea of a place that has the gall to serve such expensive food dropping huge turds over crass beverages. I've always liked the Rodney Dangerfield approach to class anarchy.

That poor "chefd" ! Seriously, though, in the arts and high dining, don't bite the sweaty gouty hand that feeds. It's something that could easily be addressed if they came back (unlikely, now) rather than in an unprofessional social media rant.

Also, as an aside, fancy non-alcoholic drinks tend to be groooooooss concoctions of lavender and sage grass.

How hard is it to go through dinner without drinking a damn soda? And while the passive aggressive tweeting was not cool, he never mentioned any names. Get over yourselves already!

seems a bit arbitrary, focusing like that on a single item of [sniff]common culture. when will this question include the larger array of items to/not to take into a "fancy" restaurant? (including, but not exclusive to: corn dog, nail gun, toilet brush, Costco package of Little Debbie Cakes, gym bag with large water bottle (with some oddball spring wire thing in it ?!), large dish with a molded jello, piston (with rings) from a 1983 Camry, mental patient on refrigerator handtruck, monkey wrench, baguette with Frenchman attached, box of Kleenex™, jar o' pickles ... and so on)

I once heard a definition of "etiquette" that stuck with me. It's behavior that makes the people around you comfortable. By bringing big gross outside food and drink to a fancy dinner they cheapen the experience for everyone around them. Which is too bad because at least some of those other diners don't get to go out for fancy meals too often and had to save up for that special night.

Don't most restaurants bar bringing in outside food or drink to their establishments? Seems like standard biz practices, and not just for fancy high end places. if you can't drink the sage and lavender concoction, how about try water.

OTOH, if the staff of AOTT had facilitated bringing in the offensive beverage (not once but twice), the problem is an internal training one, not with the customer, and it was pretty fucking inexcusable for the chef to throw a tantrum online. chefd looks like the bigger douche, by far.

I'm with @9 - who can't make it through a meal without a soda? So you don't like the nonalcoholic offerings, and you also can't drink water? Coffee? Tea?

Forget whether it's cool in a fine dining establishment (it's not), what does that say about you that you can't be without your sugar-water for one meal?

Lemonade. Classic freshly squeezed lemonade. Or they could just serve Coke, you know, in those cute little 10oz glass bottles.

I'll never be able to afford to find out myself- do they not serve soda at restaurants like this?

Customer bringing a coke, after trying other beverages, and after asking permission? Fine... as long as they pour it in a glass. Customer bringing a coke in a giant fucking Big Gulp tub = asshole.

Restaurant owner not wanting giant Big Gulp tubs on their fancy table? Totally understandable. Restaurant owner ranting about a customer online, after the customer was given permission to bring in said Coke = asshole.

The whole silly stupid affair could have been easily solved by an astute waiter in about 30 seconds. "May I pour that into a glass for you ma'am?"

You're welcome.

Repeating from others... I really don't give a shit if some mouth-breather brings a big gulp into The Four Seasons.

But seriously? You can't have one fucking dinner without a soda?

@13 But water has a serious lack of flavor and sugar, I mean come on. I can't even taste water. Gross.

I want to meet the person who will drop half a rent check on organic, free range, non-GMO, ethically-produced food, but then washes it down with what in other countries would probably be considered a lethal dose of high fructose corn syrup. Truly, this woman is America.

The soft drink containers would look bad in a fancy restaurant but hard alcohol will as surely prevent someone from tasting food. Would chefd make a fuss about it?

Th customers aren't assholes. They explained why they bring their own stuff to drink; it's because the restaurant doesn't have anything they like.

They've done this before. The only real problem is NOT what they drank (Coke), but what they were drinking it FROM (Big Gulp cup).

Which means it isn't about the drink. It's about how it LOOKS.

And since the restaurant gave them the freaking directions, and since it hasn't had any problem with them drinking Coke in the past, and since those prices are fucking ridiculous anyway, fuck the restaurant.

Fuck the diners, for that matter, because who wants to pay more money for food than most people in the world make in an entire month?

They're all assholes.

Serious front-of-house fail. True, the customer is often wrong wrong, but these customers did everything right: they asked and received permission to drink an outside beverage with their expensive meal. So why on earth is the chef shitting on them? Oh right, because he looked out on the floor and freaked out when he saw Big Gulp containers next to his plates of beautiful food. So where was the server to whisk the unsightly Big Gulps away and return with the contents in a more visually appealing container? Why didn't a floor staff person say, "Sorry Chef, let me put those sodas in a pitcher?" Someone messed up and it wasn't the customers.

For all the folks saying that the customer should have been able to get through a meal without soda: that's not the issue. I can get through a meal without champagne, but being able to drink my beverage of choice improves the overall experience for me, and if I'm spending big money on a blowout meal, shouldn't I be able to drink what I want? Any halfway decent restaurant will indulge off-menu preferences as long as they're within reason. It's part of providing great service. Shaming people for their taste in beverages is shitty no matter what the circumstances -- what's up, Judgy McJudgerson? -- but shaming people who are customers at your pricy restaurant is beyond the pale.

A friend of mine is a teetotaler and loves Mountain Dew. He ate regularly at El Gaucho and would bring a bottle with him discreetly wrapped in a bag for the server to "uncork". After a couple visits, they just started stocking a few bottles of Mountain Dew for him and served it in a glass with ice, because that's how you handle good customers.

Last Thanksgiving we had dinner at a friend's house — a nice proper Thanksgiving dinner, with all the traditional courses and wine and place settings and all that bourgeois finery — but one of the guests got up in the middle of the meal to retrieve her 20 oz. plastic bottle of Orange Crush from the refrigerator, and she then proceeded to drink it straight out of the bottle at the table. All of us who were there still talk about her faux pas. Don't do that.

Yeah, I'm for the individual freedom, with discretion.

I think the error here was in giving them directions to the 7-11. I understand that time and space can be obstacles, but someone should have simply said "Coke? Regular Coke? Sure, I'll get some, just a few minutes, no problem." and ran over to the 7-11 and bought a 2 liter bottle, put it in a pitcher, give them glasses with ice, and assume they'll compensate with the tip. Hell, I'd tip really well if someone did that for me.

The chef should look no farther than his staff if he wants someone to be irritated at. The staff also failed in that if someone walked in with the Big Gulp cup, they should immediately offer to pour them into something more suitable, and then do so.

Gross

You want them to drink water?

Like in the toilet?

This place serves diseased animal livers and mammal corpses to rich sociopaths as if it were food. GM high fructose corn syrup is the height of class compared to this scum.

Lol.... yeah, the smug absolutely drips from the menu (which has fois gras, btw).... see, right at the bottom.

http://artofthetable.net/?p=250
*eating raw or undercooked foods could make you sick. But so can eating over processed, preservative laden, GMO loaded, feed lot raised & caged foods…think about it

Uhg. I am gonna start a 4 michelin star restaurant that only serves drinks in big gulp cups. Who gives a shit. I think that the people getting angry from some person drinking out of a big gulp cup are people that I would hate. "I have worked too fuckin hard to ever see big gulp cups again." Get over it. Props on tipping proper.

So really it's the big gulp, not the non gmo high fructose corn syrup product that is the problem. Dress codes are the same old school bullshit that is going on here. "I really wanted the night that I proposed to my future wife to be special, then I saw this jagoff drinking soda out of a big gulp at a "fancy" restaurant and I knew it was not meant to be." Eat shit, if your so bothered by other peoples choices I feel sorry for you. If I proposed to my future wife at a "fancy" restaurant and some dude was sipping a 44oz big gulp, I would think it was amazing and hilarious. It would be something I would not soon forget and a story I would tell for a long time to come. If they were not being loud and obnoxious it's totally fine and most likely amazing.

Oh for fuck sakes, if someone spends 400 bucks in your restaurant (or really any money) and does something you don't like, do the right thing and tell them in person. I'm so tired of people passive aggressively bitching on the internet...Oh fuck irony.

Tacky? Sure. But professional chefs who think they serve "Works Of Art" instead of just Food are kind of full of bullshit. A restaurant is a business. Some of the customers who patronize the restaurant do not drink alcohol. People who don't drink booze have money to spend too. Maybe they aught to consider serving something that does not contain booze.

@32 While the Fois Gras does fail on the feedlot raised and caged parts of that info line (and probably on the GMO laden also) it gets a pass grade due to lack of over-processing (if you even TRY to over-process liver it falls apart) and lack of preservatives. To look at the line you posted would require it to fail at ALL of those for it to be bad. Therefor the duck livers are good since they pass in at least 2 categories. You just have to look for the loopholes. It helps if you remember that using loopholes would allow chemical companies to note that plastic is mostly derived from an organic material. And before someone chimes in about it being mostly from crude oil, be aware that crude oil itself is organic by marketing standards as it comes from plants.

@31 Those livers are not diseased. Lots of words exist that would accurately label those livers but diseased isn't one of them. I would even agree with lots of those words, just don't use diseased. If you must use the term diseased in relation to fois gras, I would suggest using it to describe the mindset of the person who came up with the idea of over-feeding geese and ducks to give them those enlarged livers in the first place.
As for the mammal corpses, I don't think they serve those either. I am pretty sure they only serve PARTS of a mammal's corpse there. Last time I was at a place that served a whole corpse (and even then it was minus the innards) was at a hog roast. And while a lot of the people there would have likely fit the term sociopath, none fit the term rich sociopath.