Yes, that’s right, free food for people who weigh more than 350 pounds. The Quadruple Bypass Burger packs an estimated 8,000 calories (which presumably doesn’t include a side of flatliner fries), and this, enough calories for four full days, is free to anyone who weighs over 350 pounds.

I’m not interested in whether Jon Basso, the “brains” behind The Heart Attack Grill, is a marketing genius or whether Heart Stoppers copied Heart Attack and I’m not even interested in the obvious question of why we would ever need more than one of these restaurants. I’m interested in that fact that we still believe that limiting unhealthy food somehow impinges on our freedom, and that we still have this defiant need to go overboard as a means of asserting our independence and/or “sticking it to the man.”

The true perversity of The Heart Attack Grill is that the same tactics that are supposed to scare people away from unhealthy food are actually encouraging them to buy it. Salon recently covered two public health campaigns focused on education, graphic anti-soda ads on YouTube and the posting of calorie contents on the menus of chain restaurants. By most accounts, the effects of these tactics are minimal. And here we have restaurants that call their menu items “bypasses,” offer you a wheelchair when you’re done eating, and use defibrillators as dining room decor, and this doesn’t repel customers, it attracts them.

If I open a restaurant called Healthcare Crisis and offer an Obesity Epidemic Burger with a side of marshmallow sauce, will I get sued?

Over 33 years, the New York Times reviewed Tavern on the Green five times. Not once did it earn more than one star on a scale of four, and twice netted what is usually a career-killing goose egg. It did, however, earn some real low-light comments. In 1976, Mimi Sheraton savaged the baby in its cradle. “Only a few of the simplest cold dishes can be considered decent …” she wrote, and somewhat more perkily: “There were other disasters here, among them a pasty veal chop en chemise, an esthetically offensive creation …”

Even when the restaurant got the food right nearly 20 years later, Ruth Reichl still despaired, “Looking around that fairyland of lights, I felt a surge of rage. To thousands of visitors, Tavern on the Green is New York … does it really have to be such a blatant example of our famous rudeness?”

And yet, despite consistently awful reviews, Tavern on the Green did incredible business. Fifteen hundred people dined under its chandeliers every day, glad-handed by owner Warner LeRoy, a man whose taste in suits would make Liberace blush, and whose father produced “The Wizard of Oz.” In its best year, it topped $38 million in revenues.

“You have to remember that restaurants had a very different function in people’s lives 30 years ago,” Reichl said to me over the phone. “They were much more special occasion places. LeRoy’s genius was knowing that people really wanted to go out for something that did not resemble their homes at all. And they loved the outrageousness of it, the theater of it. He did it like a Hollywood bar mitzvah, a Long Island wedding, that kind of celebration. It was very unabashed. And even if you knew it was awful, you’d walk past all those glittering lights in the garden and think, ‘I want to be in there.’”

Clark Wolf, a longtime food and restaurant consultant and a member of Salon’s Kitchen Cabinet, also credited some of Tavern on the Green’s success to its place and time: “Part of it is the magic of Central Park. Remember, for many years, Central Park was a scary place. Basically, you had the Tavern, and if you went in any further, you thought you were going to be murdered. It was a little bit like the urban version of the glass observation thing over the Grand Canyon, a tourist’s view into the abyss.”

But it was more, obviously, than that. Wolf continued, “It was a special occasion place, but even with all the celebrities, it was never exclusive. Successful restaurants create a sense of exclusivity, but then pierce the scrim when you get there and make you feel welcome. Then you’re seduced. It was like a party. There was no way you could behave incorrectly at Tavern, because you could never be more ridiculous than the place itself. It’s not a White House state dinner. It was kind of a goofy place. And Warner was the perfect frontman, wrapped in taffeta and topped with sparkling lights. And that was just at lunch! Everyone could love it, drag queens and their aunts from Ohio. In New York, a successful restaurant makes you feel like you’re very much in New York, or very transported out of it. Tavern was both — there was nothing more New York and nothing more Mars. I never had a good meal, but I never had a bad time at Tavern on the Green.”

I arrived at the restaurant, where auction attendees spilled out of cabs, speaking Russian, Spanish and Jersey. No one came, as would have been customary when dinner was being served, in horse-drawn carriages.

I walked through the sprawling restaurant, past the life-size statue of a bear that looked as if wailing in sorrow, and noted the items for sale. Pots, pans, a copying machine, the mundane mixed in with LeRoy’s custom suits, my favorite being the one seemingly cut from the patio furniture of a Florida retirement home. There was an entire table devoted to a collection of bronze animal heads. Where in a restaurant would you find use for a collection of bronze animal heads? Say what you will, but the imagination that went into this place was … special.

I met John, a bidder, while he was ducking his big frame into a crystal alcove, making notes on the auction schedule. “I used to work near here, for Channel 7,” he told me, his voice clear and heavy. “We used to have our Christmas parties here.”

“Once,” he continued, “my wife and I wanted to experience something, something really New York, you know? It was a spring night, the bar was open on the patio. They had music. We danced. It was nice,” he said, in that way that makes you realize that sometimes, calling something “nice” is calling it the most important thing in the world.

“I came last Friday to say goodbye, and I just couldn’t. So my wife and I, we came back to take pictures. And I’m here today.”

As he spoke, a woman walked by, calling out something to him. They shared a laugh. “We met yesterday; she was looking at buying some things,” he told me. “It’s heartbreaking.”

Later, in a hallway lined on both sides with beveled mirrors that give you the giddy, innocent illusion of being the only person in the world, I nearly caught a woman ready to faint with despair.

“I’m so sad, I can’t even stand it!” the woman moaned. Barbara was here simply to be in this place one more time. She was dressed prettily in pink, looking far younger than her 72 years, but her shoulders slumped, giving her a rounded, worn look. She listed a bit in her walk, and I, feeling more than a little inappropriate, asked her to speak with me. “Do you live in New York?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

“How long?”

“Eleven years.”

“I’ve been here since 1965. Maybe you don’t understand, but this is the place where you had every major event in your life. For every New Yorker: weddings, proposals, birthdays. Your boss would take you here for lunch if you’d done well. I mean, look at this hallway. You had the essence of a special occasion, just walking through here.” She trailed off.

“Oh, Jesus! Shit!” she blurted. I fought the urge to take her arm. She was quivering. “Oh fuck it! That’s the title of your article! Fuck it!” she spat.

“I had two marriage proposals here,” she said. And then she asked, gently, to be left alone, and for me to write the story that this place deserves.

As Barbara and I spoke, I saw another writer, scribbling furiously in her notebook, as a woman led her through the hallway. “And I was originally booked to be married in this room,” she said, turning the corner.

I took a seat in the grandest of the dining rooms, where the auction was, and where there was little sentimentality. The auctioneer had a clear, pleasant voice, but I suddenly felt uncomfortable, watching the process of liquidation. I thought of the photo I just saw of LeRoy in the hallway, in his epically ugly suit, arms outstretched as if to offer you the whole world, and I felt a sadness watching all this showiness, all this excess, all this strange passion melt into a steady, banal stream of numbers. Twelve hundred is bid … is there a 13? Do we have 13? Bar stools, silverware, piece by piece Tavern on the Green fell away, until they’ll get to the murals and the King Kong topiary, the arcs of ornaments that look like fruit crowns worn by 80-foot-tall Carmen Mirandas, and soon all that will be left will be crews of movers, and then just the memories of the Johns and the Barbaras.

On my way out, I struck up a conversation with a woman leaving with a copy of the menu. She was married there two years ago, and I realized that this was the woman leading the other writer around. “It’s like the Brooklyn Bridge, an institution of New York,” she said. “I’m glad I got to say I got married at Tavern on the Green,” she said. “It was always a party. You always met interesting people there.” 

That isn’t stopping some restaurants from putting together the usual intricate New Year’s dinner — and in some cases, charging astronomical prices. At New York’s Aureole, for example, diners will be getting a five-course meal including big-eye tuna sashimi, chestnut ravioli, Canadian lobster, and N.Y. strip loin. The price: a mind-boggling $650.

To put Aureole’s $650 price tag into context, we talked to renowned food and restaurant consultant Clark Wolf about the meaning of New Year’s for the industry, the recession’s impact on New Year’s menus, and the one dish that defines this year’s celebration.

How big of a deal is New Year’s Eve for restaurants, really?

It can be a very big deal — but it depends. Very high-end places like Daniel and Le Bernardin can do New Year’s Eve, but they don’t have to. It’s almost like they do it as a service to their clientele. It’s the middle that has to work hard. In the down economies, what the smart people do is charge moderately above their check average [the average amount of money a guest spends in a restaurant] .

What do you mean?

If their check average is $125, they’ll charge $150, $175 for a prix fixe with some choices — limit the menu to some degree and give some options, but don’t gouge. New Year’s Eve is part of the entire holiday season effort for restaurants. You can find out how you did in your holiday season by how you’re doing in January and February.

So basically, a fancy New Year’s Eve dinner is a restaurant’s enticement for people to come back in the new year?

If you do your job, they’ll keep coming in January. It’s like a Thanksgiving family dinner: If everybody gets along, you’ll probably talk more after.

What’s the logic behind the higher prices?

The logic is, you want it to be special. You want them to know you’re doing more, plus things just cost more to do on New Year’s Eve. Restaurants aren’t the only people who charge more. The flower vendors do. Even ingredients often cost more.

Do you think restaurants have changed their New Year’s approach compared to last year?

Oh my god, absolutely. Last year people were panicked. This year they’re trying to think about what to do. If they’re a special-occasion restaurant, they’re staying open. If they’re an everyday restaurant, they’re closing to be nice to the staff. Restaurants are trying to find ways to be useful to people’s lives. Last year everything was completely uncertain. Our economy went to the edge. It was terrifying. There was a real deep and broad fear. Now [diners] are making choices. For example: Tuesday we don’t need to go out to dinner, but New Year’s Eve we do.

What do you make of Aureole’s extravagant $650 New Year’s Eve dinner?

I think that says to you, That’s a corporate restaurant subsidized by money people for money people. It’s near Times Square. It opened in the midst of the downturn, so they need to get some money. They need to put on a show — which they can do. They want you to be reminded of Aureole so you’ll go back.

What do you expect to see on restaurant menus on New Year’s Eve?

I think we’re going to see a lot of macaroni and cheese with truffles on top. We want the comfort but with the luxury on top. There’s such a focus on good, pure food as being the greatest reward right now that I think we’ll see more of that, both on New Year’s Eve and not.

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It’s not macaroni and cheese, but if you’ve been lucky enough to score a table, here’s what you’ll be getting (and paying) on Dec. 31 at some of the country’s most distinguished restaurants:

Le Bec-Fin, Philadelphia: $145 for several courses that include Kumamoto oyster with American caviar, truffle-stuffed turbot, and Colorado rack of lamb.

L’Espalier, Boston: $195 for a three-course (plus dessert and amuse-bouche) menu that includes milk-fed organic pig, beef tenderloin with foie gras potato gnocchi, and potato-crusted escolar with French Osetra caviar.

Charlie Trotters, Chicago: $350 (plus $175-$250 for wine pairing) buys you, among other items, black truffles, Osetra caviar and “premium Japanese beef.”

Daniel, NYC: $595 allows you to enjoy an unspecified five-course tasting menu, live music, dancing and a midnight champagne toast at Daniel Boulud’s high-end New York eatery.

• The NYT also covers a delightful Pittsburgh wedding tradition – where, instead of a wedding-party-supplied wedding cake, guests arrive for the venue carrying tins of home-baked cookies. It’s a custom with uncertain ethnic origins (possibly Italian, Eastern European, or Greek), but may have started in the Depression as a way to spread out the expense of a wedding. At the end of the night, guests swoop in with napkins or containers to take home their share of the leftovers. In a time of hyper-commercialized weddings, this kind of down-home communalism sounds both quaint, totally fun – and perfectly suited to our depressed economy.

• The Boston Globe attempts an upscale dinner party for ten using ingredients entirely purchased at warehouse clubs like BJ’s and Costco. The menu: Scallops, lamb, and vanilla bean panna cotta with berries. The cost: $30 a head. The verdict: The meal turns out delicious, but unless you really, really love leftovers, you’re better off buying smaller amounts at more expensive stores.

• The LA Times takes on the Christmas turducken – which, in case you don’t know it, is a boned and stuffed chicken inside a boned and stuffed duck inside a partially boned and stuffed turkey. This “glorious meat-fest” can easily be bought ready-stuffed at stores around the country, but the LAT’s Noelle Carter shows readers how to make one at home. It’s clearly a very involved process, involving lots of deboning, heaps and heaps of stuffing, and stressful-sounding turkey-stitching. The one (slightly disconcerting) convenience advantage to making a turducken: It can be “simply sliced like a loaf of bread.”

• Ezra Klein writes about junk food, children and office workers  in the Washington Post. He argues that it makes sense for junk food to be removed from schools to fight obesity (“To some … the idea smacks of paternalism. To which the reply must be that paternalism was literally invented for children.”), why shouldn’t the same logic apply to offices? A company that pays for its employees’ healthcare costs, after all, has reasons to keep them healthy – and some, like Walmart and Safeway have already headed down that path. But ultimately, Klein concludes, such measures might cause more resentment than good, and only serve as another incentive for deeper healthcare reform.

The Globe and Mail writes about the growing profile of food swaps — becoming increasingly popular among “epicures and busy parents looking for convenience without compromising on nutrition.” Wency Leung talks to various swap attendees, who get together every month to exchange heaps of food (one group’s hard-to-believe guideline: making your meal shouldn’t cost more than a loaf of bread). In a recession, after all, it makes sense to cook more, and spend less — but, really, less than a load of bread?

As a scary/exciting reminder that the holiday cookie-baking season is already almost upon us, the Washington Post has an extensive cookie recipe roundup today with a mouth-watering slide show. Among the more noteworthy suggestions, blue cheese walnut cookies (“a refined cookie that goes well with port”), homemade graham crackers, and “winter rainbows,” which come out looking like a 1970s gay pride sweater.

The L.A. Times reports on the growing American supply of the intriguing once-banned Mexican fruit, tejocote. The small orange crabapple-like fruits are unappetizing raw, but when cooked have a “sweet-tart apple-like flavor” that makes them a crucial ingredient for ponche, the Mexican holiday punch. Tejocote can’t be imported because it harbors pests, but it wasn’t until five years ago that a Californian farmer began producing them domestically. (Mexico has recently filed to have the ban removed.) The small fruits can also be preserved peeled in syrup, used in jams or Christmas piñatas, or candied.

The Boston Globe takes a look at the traditions — and recipes — that make up Polish Christmas. Lila Pronczuk, a Polish-American whose parents had been confined to labor camps during WWII, explains that Christmas Eve is far more important in Poland than Christmas Day, and whips up a fragrant mushroom soup called zupa grzybowa (made with dried forest mushrooms sent by her 98-year-old Polish father-in-law). It also includes carrots, parsnips, leeks and celery roots, and, as Jane Dornbusch writes, tastes “refined, with a delicate mushroom essence.”