Rich people love lots of things—money buys happiness cachet after all! But showing just how wealthy they are may be their most favorite activity, whether it's building lavishly furnished homes, finding creative ways to avoid rearing their children or holding court at NYC's trendiest restaurants. Today the Post digs into that trend as it plays out at Kappo Masa, a prohibitively expensive restaurant by chef Masayoshi "Masa" Takayama inside Larry Gagosian's Madison Avenue gallery. Inside, stars like George Clooney and Karli Kloss are dining on noodles made from fish and $22 spicy tuna rolls while the rest of us wait on line outside the free sausage tanker.
While financially gifted people eating at a pricey restaurant isn't exactly news, the fact that the restaurant has been roundly panned—including by the Post's pan-master Steve Cuozzo—makes for an interesting study of money's ability to render its havers tasteless. "If you are one of those people who suspects that Manhattan is being remade as a private playground for millionaires who either don’t mind spending hundreds of dollars for mediocrity or simply can’t tell the difference, Kappo Masa is not going to convince you that you’re wrong," said the Times' Pete Wells in his zero star review. And yet, socialites and celebrities keep showing up, like fashion designer Vera Wang, who's allegedly eaten at the restaurant 40 times since it opened five months ago.
"A lot of the people that go there are FOL—friends of Larry," explains (barf bags at the ready) society photographer Patrick McMullan. "They are very influential and drive the scene." If you can snag the Alamuddin-Clooneys multiple times, surely the rest will follow. Let restaurateur Richie Notar tell it like it is: "If you hear the word 'Masa,' it means expensive, and people go to show they have juice and to demonstrate their social position," he explains. "Larry is powerful and his friends are helping put it on the map. They don't really care that much about food if it's a place they think they should be seen at."
Still, "regular" folks are showing up to eat, too, perhaps expecting a splurge-worthy meal befitting the high price tags. "I understand that this is a restaurant in an art gallery on Madison Avenue, so the prices aren't going to be fair, but this just seemed out of control," says Yelper Mike C., better known as the creator of FoodBabyNY on Instagram. "The pieces of sashimi were so minuscule, and while good, were just hard to enjoy knowing what each bite was costing." Another put it more succinctly: "The most pretentious restaurant I have ever been to in NYC and that's saying something!" according to Ashley M. "Bunch of losers here who are only impressed when someone is wearing a fur coat, Hermes bag and jewelry. They should stfu and look at themselves!"
That's dirt off the shoulder of R. Couri Hay, a former National Enquirer gossip columnist and a restaurant publicist. "These reviews are the revenge of the middle class. What they are complaining about is money and that they can't afford it," he brayed to the Post. "It's a club for the 1 percent of the 1 percent and nobody pretends it's not. There is a lot of disparity of income and we would like to correct that, but we still have to eat, and we are not going to McDonald's." Translation: Let them eat McCake.
