The other day, I sent a couple texts to help a friend of mine land a last-minute table at one of the best restaurants in New York. He thanked me. But moments later, he apologized. He was backing out. He just—well, he hadn't been aware that a repast at this particular restaurant would involve the all-or-nothing proposition of a four-hour tasting menu, and he didn't have the patience, the appetite, or the attention span to endure something like that. (The stratospheric price tag was not a problem.) He just wanted to sit down and order a dish or two without being schooled on which finishing school the carrots had gone to.

I was not surprised; I hear it all the time. Expensive marathon tasting menus have become the bloated rock operas of the culinary realm. Both diners and chefs (even some of the chefs who serve tasting menus) have described them to me with the kinds of eye rolls and heaving sighs that are usually reserved for wrist-slitting holiday dinners with relatives who still cling to the belief that Barack Obama is a gay Muslim.

Chef Matt Orlando of Copenhagen's Amass; a lobster-potato- mussel dish at Momofuku Ko in New York. Zachary Zavislak

If it seems absurd to whine about a meal that's supposed to maximize pleasure by tantrically stretching it beyond the running time of Lawrence of Arabia, you've probably never experienced the dread that arises when you feel like you've just ingested the caloric equivalent of a herd of cream-fed hogs—yet the dude standing at the edge of your table is telling you there are three more savory dishes to go before the cheese course, which will be followed by the "dessert movements" and a tackle box full of mignardises. In spite of the ill will that's been floating around for a few years now, chefs are in fact doubling down on tasting menus. New ones crop up regularly in New York and San Francisco and Washington, D. C.—expensive enough to appeal to ballers and long enough to require the discipline of a Buddhist monk in the lotus position.

But there's a catch, and it's one that renders all the degustation dissing moot: It depends. In the hands of the right chef, a tasting menu can leave you feeling not bored and boulder-heavy but energized, alert, fired up, even light on your feet. When you walk out of Le Bernardin in New York, it's not just the wine that's making you feel as though you might actually levitate. The same goes for Le Comptoir and Providence in Los Angeles, Alinea in Chicago, and Benu in San Francisco, not to mention Noma in Copenhagen, Pujol in Mexico City, and Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy. A rock opera is ridiculous except when it happens to be Quadrophenia, and the very best of the world's tasting menus are like the very best double (or triple) albums—the ones from which you wouldn't want to lose a single track: London Calling by the Clash and Sign o' the Times by Prince, 69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields and Exile on Main St. by the Rolling Stones, a group of gentlemen who know a thing or two about prolonged debauchery.

Expensive marathon tasting menus have become the bloated rock operas of the culinary realm.

There are ways to keep a tasting menu from turning into a gastronomic remake of No Exit. Great restaurateurs and chefs know this (sushi chefs in particular—a true omakase experience is invariably a high-speed ecstatic blur). At Amass in Copenhagen, you can get up from your table to ramble around the garden and sip beer by a bonfire; at Blanca in Brooklyn, you're welcome to wander away from the counter to spin vinyl albums on a turntable; at Le Comptoir in L. A.'s Koreatown, chef Gary Menes has a passion for vegetables that keeps the meal from veering into the wrong kind of gluttony.

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It's worth pointing out that the friend I mentioned earlier wound up falling in love with Contra, on New York's Lower East Side, where the tasting menu from chefs Jeremiah Stone and Fabián von Hauske Valtierra tends to be fast, cheap, and out of control—provided you let wine director Jorge Riera put together your own private bender of natural wines. America's tasting menus will become more fun, more delicious, and more enticing across the board as soon as more restaurants accept the show-business wisdom that spots like Contra and Le Comptoir have already put into practice: Always leave them wanting more.

10 Tasting Menus You Won't Regret

1. Le Comptoir, Los Angeles

2. Contra, New York

3. Blanca, Brooklyn

4. Benu, San Francisco

5. Addison, San Diego

6. Alinea, Chicago

7. Momofuku Ko, New York

8. Pineapple and Pearls, Washington, D. C.

9. The Inn at Little Washington, Washington, Virginia

10. Le Bernardin, New York

This article originally appeared in the February '17 issue.

Jeff Gordinier Jeff Gordinier is Esquire's Food & Drinks Editor.

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