About eight years ago, I had a nice, long lunch at the French Laundry in California's Napa Valley. Afterward I thought, "OK, that was the best meal of my life."

But why?

Was the cooking that perfect? It was certainly precise. The signature amuse bouche — a cornet (cone) filled with cultured cream and topped with a scoop of salmon tartare — would not have worked if the cone itself were more or less brittle, the cream thicker or looser, the fish seasoned with either more aggression or subtlety.

But such finesse I've seen elsewhere. The late, great Atlanta restaurant Seeger's routinely matched that level of precision.

Were the ingredients that special? They were great, for sure. Elysian Farms lamb from Pennsylvania topped with Perigord black truffles — I won't ever forget that dish. But when it comes to great ingredients, is anything as good as New Jersey Silver Queen corn in season? I doubt it.

Was it the gracious service by the yoga-limbered staff? The country farmhouse decor? The whimsical laundry pin serving as napkin cinch and souvenir? Nah, I'm there for the food.

Yes, that food, which kept coming course after course for three hours. The dishes that disappeared too soon, leaving me longing for just one more taste.

It was dining by three-bite discovery — that charm of a new dish giving in to a rapturous appreciation of its flavor before it was gone. That's what made it great.

French Laundry chef Thomas Keller didn't invent this style of dining, but he popularized it. Thanks to the influence of this restaurant and his New York not-quite-facsimile, Per Se, the tasting menu has become the benchmark for any restaurant with high aspirations.

Today, the three-course menu has morphed into the eight-or-more-course menu. A blow-out repast in a top-rated restaurant means a number of gifts from the chef to prime your appetite, a nibble parade of gorgeous food compositions on eye-catching plates and much attendant fuss.

Now I'm kind of ... over it.

I'm over the endless resetting of silverware, decrumbing of tablecloths and pregnant pauses in the meal as you wait for the next ooh-aah to arrive.

I'm over the way these meals leave you feeling both overfed and unsatisfied. I think the reason so many people joke about wanting a cheeseburger after a tasting menu is that they feel like they never got a main course.

I'm over the six different paired wines. I don't want to move from a half-pour of a chenin blanc to a riesling to a chardonnay to a late-harvest white (with the inevitable foie gras course). I want a glass of red wine by the time I'm starting to get saddle sores. Plus, if the wines are at all complex, you have to sip on them for a while and see how they bounce off different flavors.

These tasting menus are like the steps in an M.C. Escher print — they always seem to be climbing toward someplace but will never arrive.

Thankfully, a few expensive special-occasion restaurants buck this trend. Early this summer, my wife and I dined at the Georgian Room in the Cloister at Sea Island. Named one of the nation's best new restaurants in 2006 by Esquire magazine, this restaurant marks the venerable seaside resort's first major attempt at destination dining.

Chef Scott Crawford offers either a four-course menu with choices or a nightly five-course tasting menu. The courses are proper portions — not so big that you tire of them, but not the sliver of X on a swipe of Y with a foamy dollop of Z so in vogue now.

This chef doesn't fear diners with short attention spans. Rather, he lets you live with a dish so that you begin to notice the hint of tarragon in a vinaigrette (not an easy feat, as tarragon usually blares its intentions rather than hints) or appreciate the gradations in texture of a wild salmon fillet.

But the most striking aspect of a meal there is the chef's approach to the now-required cheese course. Unlike other restaurants that ask you to commit ahead of time to the cheese (as well as a surcharge for it), no mention at all is made of it on the menu. And yet here comes the trolley. It is a gift from the kitchen to be accepted, indulged in or waved away.

If you're still hungry or have a little wine in your glass that needs something to wash down, ask for a wedge of creamy Pierre Robert or sleek tomme. This is what the cheese course is for.

What a nice change of pace from the new high-end norm. A sensible meal.