The second I spotted the New York Times headline "12 Restaurant Triumphs of 2012" I started shaking with excitement. I mean, you know your city is amazing when even the restaurants have triumphs.

The list is long and impressive, including these highlights:

• The waitstaff at Gwynett St. invented a new technique for surgically repairing fused palates in utero.


• The chef at La Vara helped with the mathematical formulae that enabled robotic space rover Curiosity to safely land on Mars.


• The maitre d' at Calliope went undercover to secretly assist the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar.


• The saucier at Perla passionately stood up for the right to education for girls in Iran in stark defiance of the Taliban.

Ha. No, I'm kidding. Actually, a Gwynett St. chef made tofu from almonds. At Calliope, somebody put "tangy" rabbit kidneys on toast. At Perla, they threw some foie gras into "the sauce for roasted guinea hen."

I mean, c'mon. Even the folks in Les Miz would have stopped their fighting and starving and gone, "Now zat is what you call zee triomphe!"

Okay, maybe they wouldn't have. In fact, I'm kind of thinking the word "triumph" doesn't belong here. There's a scale of human ingenuity that ranges from a high of inventing the helicopter down to, I don't know, learning how to get off an escalator, or getting your own show on Bravo, and once you sink past "Knowing all the words to 'Ice Ice Baby,'" you should probably downgrade the description from "triumph" to something more like "achievement."

One of these "triumphs," though, is particularly strange. It's from the restaurant Blanca, which is by far the most expensive eatery in a part of Brooklyn primarily known for its bedbugs. The "triumph" here encapsulates my feelings about the current state of "fine dining" in the world.

I might have been happier with a slightly faster and less costly meal ($180 a person before tax, tip or drinks), but at how many other restaurants can you spoon up caviar while listening to a vintage Fleetwood Mac LP?

That's it, guys. After patiently reading about the triumph of a "spackle of mole poblano" and the triumph of "a puffed chip made of rock tripe," this is where I check out.

Because really, is this a good thing -- being able to pay astronomical amounts of money for food without sacrificing your ability to listen to bands ordinarily experienced in your underwear? Do people really want to savor the fruits of pregnant fish while getting reacquainted with something that was only mildly entertaining when you were 16 and zonked on Lebanese hashish? I don't know about you, but when I spend $180 for dinner, I want to listen to a string quartet. I want violinists to come by my table, and only leave when I make the appropriate dismissive gesture. I want something that screams, "Man, this is one fuckin' special occasion!" rather than, "We all agree that music has sucked since 1972."

So call me crazy, but count me out of this year's "triumphs." I'll keep wishing all of these fabulous new restaurants would go away. I'll keep wishing that we still lived in a time when there were neighborhoods that cool people could afford, when you had to walk three or four minutes before passing a restaurant with $180 tasting dinners. And yes, maybe I'm living in the past, but at least I'm not sitting at home thinking, "Gosh, I'd love to go out, but what if they make me eat caviar while listening to Grizzly Bear?"