But I remember now another detail, something I’d forced from my memory as inconvenient. That didn’t fit in the picture I was painting for myself—of an idyllic five hours in wine country, a timelessly magnificent meal prepared by a chef I idolized.

I push myself to remember what came after—what happened after we pulled away in our silly white stretch. There was little revelry in the back of that car. I remember moaning and heavy breathing. A struggle to hold on.

We willingly and enthusiastically ate and drank too much—this is clear. But this, I’d argue, is what is expected when you order the grand tasting at the Laundry or at Per Se. That you will—or should, if you’re sensible—prepare yourself in advance: maybe fast for a day. Wake up early the morning of your dinner and stretch your stomach with water. And the following day must be planned for as well. There will—there must—be a period of recovery.

Is there something fundamentally, ethically…wrong about a meal so Pantagruelian in its ambition and proportions? Other than the “people are starving in Africa” argument, and the “250,000 people lost their jobs in America last month alone” argument, there’s the fact that they must necessarily trim off about 80 percent of the fish or bird to serve that perfectly oblong little nugget of deliciousness on the plate. There’s the unavoidable observation that it’s simply more food and alcohol than the human body is designed to handle. That you will, after even the best of times, the most wonderful of such meals, need to flop onto your bed, stomach roiling with reflux, the beginnings of a truly awful hangover forming in your skull, farting and belching like a medieval friar.

Is this the appropriate end, the inevitable result of genius? Of an otherwise sublime experience?

Must it end like this?

And should it end like this? Struggling mightily to not spray truffle-flecked chunks into the toilet?

No one expects that anyone would eat like this every other day—or even every other month. But even as a once-a-year thing…shouldn’t how you feel afterward be a consideration?

I should point out that there is a perfectly reasonable nine-course option. We chose to be gluttonous. But when you’re fortunate enough to be at Per Se or at the French Laundry, you just don’t want to miss anything. You eat way past the point of hitting the wall. Or I do, anyway.

Last night, the early evening light appeared, to my jaundiced eye, unkind to Per Se. This was not a good way for me to start the meal. A dining room is a stage set, an elaborate illusion, a magician’s trick contained between four walls. Per Se’s dining room is one of the most meticulously constructed and most beautiful such spaces in New York. It looks out over Columbus Circle and Central Park. There is a wide “breezeway” of unused space between the kitchen and dining room, a luxuriously empty zone designed to serve as a peaceful, quieting transitional area where servers can have a few extra seconds to make the transition from kitchen reality to dining-room reality.

If cooking professionally is about control, eating successfully should be about submission, about easily and without thinking giving yourself over to whatever dream they’d like you to share. In the best-case scenario, you shouldn’t be intellectualizing what you’re eating while you’re eating it. You shouldn’t be noticing things at all. You should be pleasingly oblivious to the movements of the servers in the dining area and bus stations, only dimly aware of the passage of time. Taking pictures of your food as it arrives—or, worse, jotting down brief descriptions for your blog entry later—is missing the point entirely. You shouldn’t be forced to think at all. Only feel.

I was noticing things. Which is bad. Before darkness fell, bathing everything in sleek, sophisticated obscurity, the servers’ uniforms looked a little sad. Shiny in spots, and old. They looked like…waiters instead of the ambassadors of culinary Olympus I’d always thought of them as. A wall-mounted table at a waiter station drooped ever so slightly at an angle uneven with the floor. The wood trim on the furniture was almost imperceptibly but nonetheless visibly patchy, and the roses on the table the tiniest bit old, their petals starting to go at the edges. For one of two of the most notoriously perfect dining rooms in America, this was shocking. I felt sad and depressed and deeply ashamed of myself for noticing.

And maybe I was detecting a sadness, too, in the voices of the servers. Jonathan Benno, the executive chef, had announced a few weeks earlier that he would be leaving, and maybe I was only imagining it, but the exuberance, the top-of-the-world pride and confidence I encountered at the French Laundry and at previous meals at Per Se seemed lacking that night, replaced by something else.

There were goujons. Two tiny little cheese-filled pillows.

And the famous cones of salmon tartare. Just as pretty and just as delicious as ever. But kind of like an old girlfriend by now. The thrill was gone. No word is as dead as “tartare” these days, and I found myself wondering how chef Benno really felt about the things; whether those cones, once objects of child-like wonder to even burned-out fucks like me, were now prison bars of a sort—too beloved, too famous, too expected to ever be removed or replaced by any chef.

I had a pretty weak summer vegetable gazpacho, but my wife’s sweet carrot velouté was bright and clean, hinting of tarragon and anise.

I got the French Laundry classic, “oysters and pearls,” one of Keller’s most well-known and admired creations from back in the day: a sabayon of “pearls” of tapioca with oysters and caviar. The servers absolutely lavished it with caviar at tableside. If it is possible to put too much caviar on a dish, it happened here. It seemed…disrespectful of the old girl to dress her up that much. I admit to actually tearing up when this dish was put down in front of me. Even then, early in the meal, I had this inexplicable sense that I might never see her again. Here was a true modern American classic—and a personal favorite, one I was really sentimental about. I felt I shared personal history with her—all the things you’d want your guest to feel about their food. But I was dismayed by the profligacy with which my server ladled on the caviar. It felt like they were saying, “We don’t trust the bitch to go out like that anymore, we got to put on some more lipstick”—and I was offended for her.

Day-boat scallop sashimi with cauliflower fleurettes, sweet carrots, and pea shoots was flawless, impeccable—and everybody else is doing it, or something like it, these days.

Marinated Atlantic squid with squash-blossom tempura and squash-blossom pesto was vibrant and new—and quickly, it was good to be alive again.

A white-truffle-oil-infused custard with a “ragout” of black winter truffles was over the top in a good way, a happy tweak of an old favorite from The Book, joyously excessive rather than insecure about itself. It was rich, wintery, and pounded its flavor home without apology. My wife’s coddled egg with “beurre noisette” and toasted brioche was even better, too rich, too good, and too much—in the best possible ways.

But it was the next course—a homemade “mortadella” with turnip greens and violet artichokes and mustard for me, and a “coppa di testa,” made with guanciale with cucumber and ravigote for my wife—that was the first truly thrilling moment of the meal. These were refined but still relatively austere versions of everyday Italian country staples, flavors relatively rough and forward—and it felt like the first time I’d tasted salted food all day. I found myself hoping that this was the direction of the remainder of the meal. This, I thought, was good. This…was great.

I was brought rudely back to earth by the smoke-filled glass domes approaching our table. An otherwise wonderful “corned” veal tongue in one and a hunk of pork belly in the other, ruined by a completely unnecessary impulse to dazzle. They’d used those little smoke guns that no chefs seem able to keep their hands off these days, to pump the smoke into the specially custom-made, hand-blown glass vessels, and they shouldn’t have bothered. The veal tongue managed to shrug the smoke off with little negative effect—but it totally fucked up the pork belly. It pissed me off—a gimmick.