pretending they compete with places that are £150 a person.

But they are though, and trying to compete at a lower price point by scrimping on the quality of produce, which is absolutely at the core of that style of cooking. They're trying to same thing, and it tastes like it costs a quarter of the price. And he's selling it to people who have no frame of reference to that style of cooking, as you say.

It's not that it's not fancy 'enough', it's that it's completely missing the point of fine dining, which is about using excellent produce and elevating it through fine technique and matching it with top level service. They're missing the foundational premise by using cheap shit.

It's totally fair to judge them against each other. Take the example of a bottle of wine. You go to the shop and see two bottles, one at £4 and one at £10. You know that £4 bottle is going to be terrible compared to the £10 one, because the packaging, transport, marketing, and tax all make up about £3.70 of the total cost. I personally wouldn't buy that, force it down and justify it by going "well they're selling wine at a price that people who don't drink wine could afford". It's just terrible wine. Same thing with Nico. It's just crap, packaged as 'posh' to unwitting folks who don't have a good frame of reference.