How I Became Interested in Fine Dining

My interest in fine dining did not come from a single moment. Rather, it was something that had been simmering in the background for many years before the right combination of circumstances allowed it to fully bloom.

My family was not one that ate at fancy restaurants often. My parents had had a negative experience at a high end restaurant during their honeymoon (largely driven by a server who became noticeably cold after learning my parents didn’t drink alcohol) and it put them off any high end dining that wasn’t a chain steakhouse. And even as far as the steakhouses go they were a very occasional indulgence, with celebratory meals usually taken at a more casual restaurant like Macaroni Grill.

When I was in the third grade I began telling people that I wanted to be a chef when I grew up. I’m not entirely sure where this came from. I enjoyed helping my mom in the kitchen and my palate was starting to expand to accommodate more innovative flavors, like the time I put pound cake in my tomato soup just to see what it would taste like. Still, I think it was a somewhat arbitrary selection born from a need to say something when an adult inevitably asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Nevertheless, it became a useful starting point for family members thinking of birthday gifts for me. My great-uncle ended up gifting me the cookbook “Workin’ More Kitchen Sessions With Charlie Trotter”. I remember my confusion as I flipped through the pages seeing dish after dish calling for ingredients I’d never heard of and pictures of dishes plated in ways that looked like artistic sculptures. The images stayed with me even though I had little interest in eating, let alone cooking, such dishes at the time.

During my teenage years I pivoted my career ambitions away from chef (to the much more financially secure path of “creative writing”) but my interest in food remained. My dad and I were frequent viewers of food shows like “Man vs. Food”, which prompted the Netflix algorithm to recommend the documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”. I’m not sure why I decided to watch it since I didn’t even eat sushi at the time but I put it on one evening. The documentary covers the Tokyo restaurant Sukiyabashi Jiro, a sushi omakase counter famously located in a subway station that was among the first restaurants in Japan to be awarded the Michelin Guide’s highest honor of 3 stars. While I found the documentary’s coverage of the restaurant and its chef interesting, I was more fascinated by the Michelin Guide itself and how its very existence hinted at a world of dining I knew nothing about.

When I was an undergraduate student, I had the opportunity to study abroad in France. By this point I had taken a hard turn away from the arts and was majoring in mathematics. My chosen field didn’t exactly require foreign study so the experience was brief, only lasting the 3 week period in between the end of the spring semester and the start of summer session, and was located at Clermont Auvergne University. I enjoyed a lot of wonderful food, entirely of the casual variety, but the trip did have an interesting intersection with fine dining. UCA is located in Clermont-Ferrand, which also happens to be the headquarters of Michelin. During my study abroad I had the chance to visit Michelin headquarters and tour their museum, where I learned the history of their Red Guide. They even had a display of every Michelin Guide ever published. I ended up purchasing an English language copy of the red guide from the gift shop and poured over the descriptions of restaurants, not sure if I’d ever actually get the chance to eat at one of them.

Graduate school didn’t provide any opportunities for fine dining or overseas travel. I did, however, watch the film The Menu, a horror/dark comedy satire on the fine dining world. I thought the film was funny, if a bit messy thematically, but in particular I was captivated by the dishes portrayed. Even though they were satirical, the dishes had been designed by an actual chef (Dominque Crenn, executive chef and co-owner of the 3 Michelin starred Atelier Crenn in San Francisco) and I came out of the theater thinking that the titular menu actually seemed kind of intriguing. As ridiculous as it had been intended to seem, the dining experience still seemed like the sort of thing I wanted to try at least once in my life (minus the horror aspects).

By 2024 I had completed my PhD and moved to northern New Jersey to work for a pharmaceutical company. Later that year I had the chance to join a college friend on a trip to Japan. Taking advantage of the favorable exchange rates and the first non-grad stipend salary of my life, I was able to book some high-end omakase and finally enjoy the type of meal I had seen in that documentary many years prior. I loved the omakase format with the variety of flavors it offered and the way that it paced the dishes over a longer period of time than the default swallow-everything-in-fifteen-minutes I usually practiced.

Six months later, in the summer 2025, I began my fine dining journey in earnest. Work had become stressful and the work-life balance I had enjoyed up to that point went out the window. Food has always been a comfort to me (translation: I stress eat) and the consolation I had for my extensive work hours was the pay. I decided it was finally time to take the risk and satisfy my long-standing curiosity about fine dining. I was going to book a meal at my first Michelin-starred restaurant.

As I researched my options, I noticed that NYC had an abundance of Korean fine dining options. Even better, many of them seemed to offer a variety of teas and other non-alcoholic beverages, which made me feel a bit more comfortable as a non-drinker. In the end, I decided to book a seat with Noksu, an open kitchen counter in Koreatown. More accurately, it’s located in the 34th St-Herald Square subway station, a location the owners chose partly inspired by Sukiyabashi Jiro’s location. It seemed fitting that my first Michelin-starred restaurant would be one that paid homage to the documentary that had first taught me about the Michelin Guide.

Then under the chef Dae Kim, Noksu delivered a meal that was delicious and, contrary to the stereotypes of fine dining, left me satisfyingly full. Beyond just the food, I loved how the restaurant lacked any stuffiness or pretension. My server did a wonderful job picking up on my enthusiasm for the dishes and as the meal went on he took to explaining more about how the dishes were created. It fascinated me to hear how even the simplest looking ones had so much work behind them; the open kitchen allowed me to see some of this work myself.

Before I knew it the 3 hour meal was over. As I left the restaurant, copy of the menu I had just enjoyed in hand, I felt energized by what I had just enjoyed. Much to my delight, my first taste of fine dining had not tasted like a ripoff. It tasted like the start of a beautiful friendship.

And my bank account wept.