Diners Crave Luxury and Exclusivity from New York’s Restaurants

Michelin-starred Noksu is located in the Herald Square subway station.
(Credit: Zahra Tayeb)

Ten years ago, New York City had roughly 30 omakase restaurants, most of them tucked inside regular sushi restaurants as a luxury add-on. Today, there are 180 standalone omakase counters dotted around the city, sometimes charging $500 per person for a chef-curated dining experience.

At Nakaji in Chinatown, every fish is flown in from Japan, including baby scallops from Hokkaido. In Koreatown, Noksu serves its $245 per person omakase, or chef’s choice, at a counter behind an industrial door inside the Herald Square subway station.

“We want to serve amazing food, but on top of it, we want the entire dining experience to be special,” said Bobby Kwak, owner of Noksu, in an interview. “Noksu is very different, given our unique location, given that it has a speakeasy vibe, it’s 20 feet underground. It’s a one-of-a-kind experience. You won’t find anything else like this in New York City, let alone in America.”

Though grounded in Korean cuisine, Noksu incorporates Chinese and Japanese influences, among others, at its intimate counter. The exterior has no signage.

“What we do differently from other fine dining restaurants is that we’re not very formal. We treat everybody who walks in there like they are one of our closest friends,” Kwak said, adding that his staff greets their customers by their first name upon entering Noksu.

Tasting menus of all genres have become central to New York’s fine dining scene. Tasting menus of multiple courses for a fixed price reflect the chef’s personal flavor profile and typically include hard-to-get ingredients. On the Upper West Side near Lincoln Center, Jean Georges now only serves tasting menus at a price of $300. The two-Michelin-star French restaurant scrapped its à la carte options in 2019 after tasting menus came to represent 70% of nightly orders, according to Eater New York.

Booking data drives home what is happening across America. Reservations on OpenTable Experiences, which include chef’s tables, tasting menus, and themed nights, increased nearly 27% in 2025 from the previous year.

The rise of omakase counters and tasting menu-only restaurants is a seismic shift in New York City’s restaurant economy. Fine dining restaurants are competing to attract and retain elite diners that are willing to pay for novelty and exclusivity, from tasting menus and chef’s counters to invitation-only events, and concierge partnerships like American Express.

Dining as theater can be attributed in part to televised competitions like MasterChef USA, where viewers watch chefs compete and prepare novel menus, creating widespread appreciation for food artistry. Viewers aspire to sample these elaborate creations. Cultural hits like the Netflix series The Bear have likewise drawn back the curtain on the fervent race for Michelin stars, spurring excitement around expensive menus. And social media has only amplified the appeal. Fixed-price tasting menus, seasonal and locally sourced ingredients, and seats at a chef’s table have turned meals into visual events on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, fomenting the idea that a splurge at least occasionally is a social marker.

The trend highlights a widening divide in the city’s food scene, where experience-driven fine dining gains as the broader restaurant market struggles. Though 2025 sales numbers aren’t final yet, about 42% of operators reported they were not profitable last year.

The Federal Reserve’s January New York Beige Book found that higher-priced dining demand remains strong in New York, while the middle segment remains challenging. In the K-shaped economy, where economic fortunes diverge among income groups, higher-income consumers have money to spend on luxury dining experiences, while middle and lower-income households tighten their belts under the weight of inflation.

“We’ve seen a major peak in interest in experiential dining, specifically around collaborations,’’ said Kate Schwartz, director of restaurant marketing for Momofuku, in an OpenTable report. “We launched our East Village Noodle Nights series this year, where we collaborated with three different chefs at Noodle Bar East Village. All three sold out. I think people are hungry for dining experiences that feel ephemeral, something they can’t get tomorrow.”

Owners of high-end spots say diners care more than ever about where food comes from, pushing chefs to source local ingredients that are often stated on menus across New York City, said Evert Gruyaert, US Restaurants and Food Service Leader at Deloitte, in an interview. At the same time, chefs are curating menus around spicier flavor profiles as consumers demand meals with a kick, he added.

Consumers are prioritizing dining out as a form of entertainment over other discretionary spending categories, according to Lisa Miller, a consumer insights and innovation strategist and author of the book “The Business of Joy.”

“Dining out rated higher than shopping at retailers (28%), attending sporting events (28%), and attending night clubs/bars (25%), and was on par with going to the movies (also 34%),” she said in an interview. Of course, the movie business is suffering as more people choose to watch content at home. So perhaps even high-end restaurants with their pricey staff and costly ingredients also have reason to worry.

For fine dining restaurant owners and workers, the challenge is continuously inventing reasons to keep their well-heeled clientele coming back.

“Consumers are really looking more for some of those experiences, and restaurants are willing to play into that,” said Gruyaert of Deloitte. “Even lower incomes are willing to set some money aside to have those experiences.”

At Noksu, reinvention is already underway. The restaurant will debut a new tasting menu from its executive chef, Aaron Chang, blending Korean flavors with Scandinavian influences, inspired by Chang’s heritage and his years at the two-Michelin-star restaurant Atera in Tribeca.