What does $200 taste like?

Frank Bruni's restaurant reviews, in the maybe two times I've read them, seem to ask the same question--was this meal worth the gazillion dollars it cost?--and his answer was yes for Masa, no for Ducasse. As I've written before, I can't quite see how, aside from piling up on expensive ingredients and serving everything in a pseudo-Versailles, any one meal could be an experience "worth" more than maybe $30. Don't people get full--or sick of tasting still more little bites of different dishes--well before they've reached the $100 mark? Isn't there a decent chance that, for the average person, the night of the reservation at Masa or Ducasse, they suddenly find that they're craving a Papaya King hot dog? My own sense of it, from having been not to these but to mini-these, is that these restaurants primarily serve not critical connosseurs like Bruni but those who have decided that this is living, people who wil ooh and ahh at anything they pay over a certain amount for and consume in a sufficiently opulent setting, or those trying to impress someone, either for business or romantic purposes. Ducasse and similar may have tasty food, but that's sort of beside the point. The $25 and under column in the Dining section is the one centered on tasty food, not because very expensive food is never tasty, but because so few people care if it is.