Recession: Who is it hitting?

This past weekend, I was in Rochester, NY meeting up with some B(usiness)-School and college buddies for some drinks. One night, my b-school buddies and I went to an old haunt: an upscale restaurant named 2Vine. I've linked to the menu, but the average entree is about $30 with a typical meal averaging about $50-60 a person.

I was surprised when I called up the night before to get dinner reservations. We had to go at an earlier hour because they had much of their time slots reserved already. When I showed up, they had to turn away quiet a few people because they had no spots for walk-ins until 8:30PM.

This is surprising to me that they were doing so well. This isn't the first time I've been to a nice restaurant and seen it packed to the gills with people in the past few months. Sometimes I think that there are MORE people going to nice restaurants than before.

Perhaps people are choosing dine in or go out to eat nicely, but stop visiting the mid-tier resturants like an Applebee's or TGIFridays?

I don't know how I would collect that evidence, but certainly from this weekend, the rich don't seem to be that much poorer than before.