Higher wages are spurring innovation in dinner

Before the main course comes out on a Friday night, the diners are asked to pause for some entertainment. “I’m not one to just throw a dinner party with nothing,” says the host, and then a musician stands up and sings. The assembled guests, seated along two long tables, whoop. Each person attending has paid $90 for the meal, which consists of six courses plus paired wines and cocktails. The banquet is themed loosely around Shabbat, the Friday evening meal for observant Jews. The scene is not, however, at a fancy restaurant, but in an art gallery. Paintings depicting different foods line the walls. The host, Allan Weinberger, who is also the gallerist, notes which have already sold, and that the painter is among the crowd.