Is fine dining dead? Based on the myriad fantastic restaurants that have opened in Austin in the past few years, you may be inclined to think I’m crazy for asking.

But I’m talking about fine dining in the conventional way. If you’ve gone out to a restaurant that serves phenomenal food, offers a great wine list, has a sensational staff and delivers a bill that makes you feel like you’ve just enjoyed a fine dining experience, then you may feel that there are plenty fine dining options in town. But that’s not necessarily true.

Fine dining, at least from an “old school” perspective, includes a dedicated multi-course meal at a full service, white tablecloth restaurant with impeccable service from a highly trained, formally attired staff. The food presentation is usually exquisite and the chef often comes from a distinguished background with French culinary techniques and extensive apprenticing in other high end restaurants. Oh, and the bill is usually pretty sizable.

There are some that would argue that fine dining never really existed in Austin to begin with other than the few exceptions of Congress restaurant and maybe a handful of restaurants over the years, including the Driskill Grill when Congress’ David Bull as at the helm, a steakhouse or two and perhaps chef Will Packwood’s Emilia’s, which has long since exited the dining scene. But it may be that Austin just never needed — or wanted — that type of restaurant in the first place.

With the closing of notable restaurants such as Andrew Weissman’s Le Reve and Jason Dady’s The Lodge in San Antonio, and heralded restaurants like Spain’s El Bulli and Chicago’s Charlie Trotter’s, it’s hard not to wonder if we’re experiencing a shift in the dining culture in general. Is it our strained economy? Is it that Austin just has a more casual approach to everything? Is it that we all just want more of a connection with the restaurant, the chef and the people who are serving us instead of cold, white-glove service?

You may have your own opinions, but I thought it would be worth while to ask a few industry experts to weigh in on how they see the state of dining, whether it’s fine or not.

Ned Elliott, Chef/Owner Foreign & Domestic restaurant, comes to Austin by way of many nationally-renowned fine dining restaurants, including Danny Meyer, Picholine and the Essex House under chef Alain Ducasse. He his wife, Jodi opened Foreign & Domestic in May 2010:

I think the concept of fine dining is just different these days. I think the change came when I was at restaurant Ducasse in the fall of 2000. Everything was very French in the manner of service and formality. But after September 11, a lot of that changed. We had a rough economy then and we’re going through another one now. Chefs and restaurant owners have started to think more about the customer and began making it more approachable to go out and have a good meal. You don’t have people wanting to sit down to a four hour meal for $300 a head as much anymore. It’s just too much.

A lot of people think Foreign & Domestic is fine dining, but it’s not. We’re by no means a fine dining restaurant. We have a small wine and beer list. We don’t have bread service or cheese service or espresso. We only have coffee. Our chairs are not padded, the tables don’t have white tablecloths.

We consider ourselves a neighborhood restaurant. But it’s the attention to detail and the quality of the ingredients that we use that make people think we’re a fine dining restaurant. It’s a new perception that the food itself is the star rather than the entire white-glove experience.

Now people like to go out to enjoying being with friends. They want to be able to order a bunch of things that everyone can try rather than each person having a set course of dishes. They still want the food to be great and for everything to be cooked just perfectly, but it’s also about having a great time and leaving satisfied, but not overly full. That’s what people are looking for. And that’s the majority of what you’ll find in Austin.

At the same time, it’s nice to have a place where you can dress up in a suit and go have something special. Congress is probably the only place in Austin that I would call fine dining. And while it’s not something people can go to every night, it’s nice to know there’s a place where you have to try a little harder than just putting on jeans and a shirt.

Leo Barrera, General Manager Uchiko, is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. Barrera honed all of his front of the house knowledge from years of managing the wine program and overall dining room for New York’s famed Gramercy Tavern before moving to Atlanta to open Craft. He moved to Austin in early 2011 as general manager of Uchiko.

You read about fine dining going away all the time. I personally don’t think it’s dead or going anywhere. It’s receded recently, but the students coming out of culinary school still want to go to work at places like 11 Madision Park, Alinea or to the former El Bulli to learn how to serve traditional multi-course fine dining.

To me, fine dining has evolved a little to become more casual in some respects, but at its core, fine dining has always done well and always will regardless of the economy we’re in. If you take away the layers like the expensive tablecloths, the expensive china and uniforms, what you still have is great training from both the kitchen staff and the front of the house (FOH) service.

That’s what differentiates dining as “fine” these days. You have your FOH that is highly trained, with lots of knowledge about both food and wine and they’re also more personable than they used to be. The kitchen supports this by searching for the finest ingredients and preparing the best food possible.

In Austin, people go to places like Uchiko or Barley Swine and the atmosphere may have a different energy, but they’re looking to have a meal and an entire experience that they won’t forget. The difference between fine dining now and how it was 20 years ago is that we’re giving it in a different package. But the training, the knowledge and the soul are still very much there.

You see that almost exclusively in Austin. In New York, you see a bit of the old style and the new style. When I worked in Atlanta, there was still a lot of pomp and circumstance about fine dining, but in many ways that is due to the more Southern culture that steeped in a different kind of history.

June Rodil, Beverage Director, Congress Restaurant and Second Bar + Kitchen is perhaps one of Austin’s most celebrated sommelier’s. Rodil has managed the wine and beverage lists of the Driskill Hotel, Uchi, Uchiko and Congress. She is the 2009 winner of the Best Texas Sommelier awarded by the Texas Sommelier Conference and recently received a spot as one of the Best New Sommeliers for 2011 by Wine and Spirits magazine.

When you hear the term fine dining it’s definitely more blurred more than it was before. But it’s not dead. It’s the apex a culinary team makes or what service can be when you’re dining out. It’s the difference between having a bottle of Champagne versus a bottle of Prosecco. It’s not a daily thing, but it is something people look forward to.

In the past, fine dining was primarily for people with means. People who had disposable income and could afford it. But now it’s for people who are in the know about great food and great service. It’s a larger group of people who are dining this way thanks to what television and Internet has done. These days, everyone is a critic, which means we have to be on top of our game in a different way. Because it’s more approachable to a wider demographic, there are certain things that have diminished, though.

Before you used to come across different servers with different functions. In classic French service, they could care less who you are. But now, people know servers by name and they have a certain connection with them. It’s helped break down barriers from what was once a first class curtain between the front of the house and the back of the house.

Plus you have chefs who are now opening a spin off of their fine dining restaurant to get people comfortable with their style of food and their style of service in a more casual atmosphere. Thomas Keller has done it with Ad Hoc, Danny Meyer and Alain Ducasse have done it. It’s exactly what David Bull has done with 2nd Bar and Kitchen.

At Congress was still have some of the pomp and circumstance; we serve from the right, we clear from the left, we have all of our mise en place in order. Congress is probably Austin’s only fine dining restaurant in the conventional sense. There’s a high standard of service, that languid dining experience where you don’t feel rushed in any way; a kitchen staff that halts the kitchen if you get up for the restroom, Italian linens, fresh forks and knives for every dish; and as I like to say it, there should be nothing else that you need and hopefully, you didn’t have to ask for much before it was already there.

But we also take extra steps to make that connection with the customer. We respect the ritual, but we have to respect the connection. Generally speaking, people wan the connection with the people at the restaurant, and that’s where fine dining has changed.

That’s a treat. I think that’s a treat. And whether you go to Congress or Uchi or anywhere for that experience, it’s about feeling as though you’ve been treated.