MY MEAL AT THE FRENCH LAUNDRY lasted three hours, as measured from an initial cheese-scented brioche to a concluding chocolate dome with pistachio nougat. Nevertheless, it had the curious quality of seeming to begin only at the meal's exhausted end, when the check arrived. It was the sheer size of the bill—1,200 dollar for four, or 300 dollar apiece—that compelled me to reassess the meal in terms of its price. Flavors faded from memory and were quickly replaced by dollar signs. Professional historians say that we write our chronicles of the past "proleptically" when we describe events in terms that anticipate other things yet to come, as though the past already contained the germ of the future. After the bill's arrival, I felt a kind of gastronomic prolepsis come over me, and I struggled not to project the horror of the meal's cost back onto each morsel, whose deliciousness I could, at that point, only grudgingly admit. While Thomas Keller, the owner and head chef of the French Laundry, deservesthe high praise he receives, how could I help but feel guilty at the expense? There was my own wallet to think of, naturally, but there was also guilt over the many who go hungry each day.
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