Yes, long live reasonable markups and good BYOBs/gentle corkage!

Wine is always the profit center for these restaurants, it’s totally a rip off. The worst part is that most of the time the wine list is really cr-p, overpriced and often doesn’t pair too well with the food.

I have to say starting about 4-5 years ago, we started going mainly to restuarants that allow BYOB with a corkage fee. Most have been reasonable, but even the ones that were $35 were worth it when you look at the QPR ration of the wines we brought vs. the price/quality of the meal vs. what we would have paid had those wines been available on their wine list or if we had had to buy wine from the list that we would not have enjoyed very much and felt ripped off at the same time.

PS: At the higher end restaurants whgen we typically go with friends and bring several wines we often ask the server and chef if they’d like to try the wines and have had the chef come out to comment on our pairings and even once they provided an additional cheese course as a thank you which was wonderful with our dessert wine. The waitress got a great tip and it was a win win for everyone.

This works great if the goal is education/enjoyment and profit, as opposed to just profit.