CaptionCopyIfAny. [Photograph: Amazon]

On his blog Sky Full of Bacon, Chicago food writer Michael Gebert brings the Truth Hammer to bear on underground dinners:

But these underground dinners are like somebody finding the dilapidated space in the edgy neighborhood—and then charging $85 per seat for an illegal performance of The Lion King. They use an underground atmosphere to cover the fact that they're trying to serve a Blackbird-level meal at a Blackbird-level price without the costly support system of Blackbird. If you could pull it off, it would probably be pretty lucrative. But they often seem not to pull it off, and so you wind up with a sub-Blackbird experience at the full Blackbird price, The Lion King in cheap Halloween costumes.

Ouch.