anybody with half a brain understand that in any context/industry/market when you go beyond the norml/average/typical level of good/service you're essentially over-spending money on signalling you can get something other people can't rather than the actual good/service.
The actual food itself often uses both more expensive/rare ingredients and is significantly more labour intensive to prepare, even if you could hypothetically order it off of a kiosk McDonald’s style
Its really not too much money. You can get yourself a really nice steak dinner for like $40-60. Thats like three trips to the mcdonalds these days you avoid to save up for that. And the subject matter of the article, $2000 bottles of wine, relatively speaking for that persons total wealth and income blowing a dozen of those is nowhere near as financially disastrous as a broke college student buying two boxes of Franzia.
I always thought of fine dining as the sort where the restaurant decides what you're going to eat, where only enough food is served so you experience the taste/texture, and you're not going to get that for $60.
That experience has been democratized to an extend and I've paid as low as like $35 for something like that. I don't dabble in that world often because I like to actually eat food and not be hungry again in an hour.
dining is no exception.
some people get a kick out of this.