Coral Star Moments is the «VIP» tier of Bistro 555. It’s for people who want to feel like they’re at the bottom of the ocean but also, somehow, in outer space. The ceiling is covered in fiber-optic lights that twinkle like stars, while the floor is a glass-bottomed tank filled with very judgmental-looking fish. It’s a lot of sensory input. I spent half the night looking up and the other half looking down, which resulted in a mild case of vertigo and a very confusing interaction with my soup.

The staff is trained to create «Moments.» This means that every time you take a sip of water, someone appears to tell you a legendary tale about the source of that water. «This water was harvested from a glacier that was once stepped on by a very sad penguin,» they’ll say. It’s a bit much. I just wanted to hydrate, not go on a spiritual journey. But at Coral Star, everything is an Event. Even the breadsticks come with a backstory that involves a secret society of bakers and a moonlit ritual.

You can’t have a «Star» experience without paying star-studded prices. I ordered a dish called «The Supernova.» I expected it to be a massive explosion of flavor. Instead, it was a very small, very dense ball of chocolate that looked like a black hole. It was delicious, but I’m pretty sure it had its own gravitational pull. I lost a cufflink to it. The waiter told me it was «part of the moment.» I told him I’d like my cufflink back, or at least a discount on the $18 sparkling water.

Discussion topic: Has the «experience» killed the «meal»? At places like Coral Star, the food feels like an afterthought to the «Moments.» We spend more time photographing Bistro 555 the dry ice smoke than we do actually tasting the sauce. Are we dining, or are we just attending a very expensive theater production where the props happen to be edible? I miss the days when a «moment» at dinner was just someone accidentally dropping a fork, not a choreographed light show involving a sea urchin.