Details about this story

• Source: New York Times
• Date: June 26, 2005
• URL: Read the story
• Bylines: Jo Craven-McGinty , Jennifer Steinhauer
• Topics: Restaurants
• Data Types: Other Data
• Description/Excerpt: Restaurants like Le Zoo -- small, with a decent and inexpensive wine list, a memorable special, a total bill for two of $50 -- used to be easy to recognize, the high-quality neighborhood places that were one of New York's pleasures. But now, in Manhattan, they are increasingly becoming a memory. To get a rough gauge of how much more diners now have to pay, The New York Times compared the average price of a 1994 meal in Manhattan restaurants given one star in the newspaper's restaurant reviews with last year's average. In 1994, the average one-star meal cost $33; it now costs a little more than $50, pushing it outside many people's weekend budgets. That is a 51 percent increase, and even after adjusting for inflation, it represents an 18 percent increase. Prices, which provide a snapshot of city dining, were taken from the Zagat Guides for 1994 and 2004.