El Bulli is not actually that expensive for the meal itself ($250/person?), but it's impossible to get a reservation. Since they announced they will be closing and turning into a cooking school in 2012, it's basically impossible to get a reservation unless you Know Someone. Steve Jobs can get a table as a walk in, probably, but your average $10-50mm exit startup founder cannot.
El Bulli is closed after this season. It books up a year in advance. It does indeed lose money, but it's a loss-leader for a larger Adria empire. Long story short, none of us are going to El Bulli.
Are you sure you didn't have the tasting, rather than the tour?
If not, I'm confused, since the tour is $225, and then the wines are said to be nearly as much as the meal, so with tip, that would put it just about at $500 a person. Even with zero wine, it'd be $270 with service.
I am 100% positive everyone had the tour. Dinner took SIX HOURS.
I am less positive about the pricing, but I remember a number that started with a "3", and I remember thinking "I am surprised that this is not the most expensive meal in Chicago". (I meant to communicate, "200 less than 500". Sorry!)
Don't be envious. Come work for us! We will take you to Alinea.
Ask HN: I'm going on my first date with a real girl. But my only formal attire is a Red Voyager Star Trek uniform. Should I spend money on formal clothing, or will my Star Trek uni be reasonable?
Hilarious. We use it amongst ourselves, but I didn't realize Brian had actually submitted it to the Urban Dictionary.
I tend to use it as a blanket answer to questions about extreme scaling. It's a way to tell someone that they're focusing on a problem that is really not an issue at such an early stage of a startup.
Q: "Can Rails scale to 100 million unique visitors a month?"
A: "That's a Maserati Problem. No matter what the answer, you'll be happy as hell to have that problem."
Agreed but by the same token your company/software from 1990 would probably not be around in 2000.
I get the impression "Maserati problems" (not quibbling about the definition, but from a "should I care about this" stance) are those for which the cost of focusing on them now is greater in impact terms than leaving it until later.
Y2K was probably a Maserati problem at the time because if your software was going to be around for 10 years, the profits from it should easily cover the maintenance task of resolving the bug.
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