According to a writer who grew up in Kansas City but long ago made his escape to New York, Midwesterners suffer from Rube-a-phobia, the morbid dread of being taken for a rube.

Some Midwesterners attempt to compensate for this condition by affecting their own pathetic, comical interpretation of cosmopolitanism. But the truth is that we are rubes. We deserve to be duped. That is our office in life.

On a recent trip to the Big Apple, I played the role like a professional. I wanted to do something special for my two sons, who have made their own escape to New York, perhaps hoping to avoid becoming a rube like their dad. I wanted to impress them, to show them a good time, to prove that I could run with the big city spenders. That’s the kind of thing that occurs to a rube when he visits New York. The kind of thing that makes him Gotham’s lawful prey.

Seduced by a swanky review

A review of a hot, new, swanky Japanese restaurant had seduced me. (Use of a word like “swanky” stamps one indelibly as a rube.) Yes, it was expensive. Absurdly expensive. I could have flown to Tokyo for the price. But wasn’t that the point — spend a fortune to impress the kids?

Breathlessly, I’d read about an 800-pound temple bell in the two-story dining room and the ice-carved Buddha, sitting in a black pond strewn with scarlet rose petals. Sushi flown in from Japan daily was served on black lacquer plates inlaid with mother of pearl. There were eight kinds of tuna. “Noten top toro,” from the head of the fish, came on a pink-and white porcelain platter “decorated with delicate drawings of Japanese figures so exquisitely done that it could have been lifted from the Oriental collection at the Met.”

The proper question would have been, “What does this have to do with the food?” But I was so intoxicated by words like “lacquer,” “mother of pearl,” and “noten top toro,” that it didn’t occur to me to ask. I was lost in a trance. The waitresses, I read, wore white high-necked blouses printed with “a gray bamboo motif and the wide, black skirt-like pants worn by samurai warriors.”

I read the review aloud to my wife.

“I hope this isn’t one of those places where you pay for the show instead of the food,” she said. Alas, I didn’t heed her. I was salivating over platters which had been painted with “a special 16-bristle brush made from the hair of a field mouse specially bred for the purpose.”

Anyone with a healthy drop of skepticism would have guffawed at this preposterous flummery and reserved a table at Taco John’s or Burger King instead. But I was possessed, up to my gills in gullibility. I couldn’t live without experiencing beef from cattle that had been massaged and serenaded with Mozart, cooked on a special hot stone from the Nakagawa River or skewered and grilled on “binchotan” charcoal found only near Kyoto and said to have purifying properties. Only the best for a connoisseur such as I.

Rubes welcome

I called to make a reservation. Not so fast. A bumpkin from Kansas doesn’t just walk into such an exclusive institution. The department of reservations ordered me to send a signed fax with a copy of my credit card allowing the restaurant to bill me at the rate of $50 per person if I failed to show. I ought to have heard the warning bells, but I was flattered that management would even consider taking the money of a nonentity such as I.

The great evening arrived. I expected the doorman to beat us with a stick and drive us away, but we were admitted to the sanctuary without even a scoff of scorn. You would have thought we were nobility. A shout went up when we entered the dining room. The hostess reassured us. “They’re only welcoming you in Japanese,” she said. Looking back, I wonder…Were they really shouting “Welcome!” — or “Suckers?”

Sake with service

Waiters and waitresses swarmed around us and presented us with menus thick as telephone books. I could have fed our party of six at Zen Zero for the price of a single entree. A kind of numbness came over me. I abandoned myself to the exquisite agony of getting fleeced.

Would I like to see the “Sake Master?” one of the waitresses asked. I had never had sake in my life. I had no idea what sake was. I condescended to see the Sake Master. I expected a wizened guru uttering Zen koans, but the Sake Master was a long-haired kid who held up a list of sakes and asked, “Do you like sweet or dry?” I went for a fine dry sake, $65 the bottle.

I ordered the whole fried mackerel, which according to the review had been baked for two weeks at 1,000 degrees Celsius. That’s a long time in the oven. I braced myself for a plate of ashes. But it was an ordinary mackerel I got. As to its taste, the word that comes to mind is “fishy.” In short, it wasn’t very good. I’ve had better Kaw River carp.

The beef came with its precious hot stone. It was the size of a Band-Aid and sliced wafer thin. I’m guessing we got about an ounce. The waitress showed us how to grill it, using a pair of bamboo tongs (made no doubt from a unique bamboo with rejuvenating powers).

“So you had to cook your own food?” my daughter snorted when I told her about the feast. She laughed out loud when I told her about the welcome shout. “It sounds like the Home of the Throwed Rolls,” she said.

The bill staggered me. I left the establishment giddy with vintage sake and the perverse pride of the patsy, exchanging my stupid grin for a succession of smirks as I made my way to the door. I sensed they almost admired me for taking my beating like a man.

It was a once in a lifetime experience — I hope. But for New Yorkers, paying a month’s salary for a meal is no big deal. According to a recent article, “Midas fever,” is rising in New York again. A Picasso sold for $104.1 million at Sotheby’s the other day. Investment bankers are drinking $1,200 bottles of 2001 Domaine Leroy Chambertin at lunch. Le Parker Meriden offers a $1,000 omelet (eggs, lobster, caviar). The average Manhattan apartment goes for $1 million. A Sally Hershberger haircut will run you $600. (Four- to 12-week waiting list.) A pair of gold Havana flipflops with diamonds: $17,000 at H. Stern’s. A New York specialist will “organize your closet” at the rate of $450 an hour.

I’m thinking I got off cheap. And it makes me happy to reflect that I get my hair cut once a month at Mike Amyx’s for $6 (special senior citizen price, no wait list). Moreover, I can get the big, juicy cheeseburger with French fries at Walt’s in Baldwin, $3.99. I defy you to find a better burger anywhere. We’ve got it good in Kansas, rubes that we may well be.