E-Mail This Article to a Friend Sweet — and savory — dreams Splurge on a fantasy-dining experience this holiday season BY RUTH TOBIAS

We’re so over visions of sugarplums. In adulthood, at a time of year when food is synonymous with revelry, our gastronomic fantasies run from the utterly rococo to the simply wicked. They begin, perhaps, with a tabletop straight out of a Flemish still life, scattered with oysters glistening like pearls themselves and lustily torn hunks of crusty bread; variegated bottles of Champagne, of mead, of port; black grapes spilling from silver bowls and chargers spread with cheeses in full deliquescence. Next comes a platter laden with viands: clove-studded hams, mammoth drumsticks, hooked flounder, sausage links. And maybe its bearer is a buxom, pink-cheeked, giggling wench, or a golden-curled, loincloth-clad houseboy, or both ... oops, sorry, those versions aren’t for publication (at least not this one). This fantasy is strictly culinary, and occurs in a posh restaurant setting right here in Boston, the kind in which price is no object for any who enter there — which, in this version, means you.

To aid in your stimulation, we’re leading you on a splurge-seeking expedition, pointing out the sort of extravagant eating experiences you can expect to encounter when you strike out on your own. Generously enough, we’ve also included a few under-$30 options for those of you who are too broke even to dream big.

Picture yourself, then, whiling away the afternoon in a plush antique armchair amid cultivated murmurs and the clinking of china: it’s teatime, when the seemingly exclusive adjectives "civilized" and "decadent" are allowed to meet and briefly become synonymous. And their favorite rendezvous is the Bristol Lounge, whose Four Seasons Tea Royale ($31) is the stuff of local tradition. The sandwiches alone enact the evolution of the term "upper crust": think chicken-apricot salad wrapped in lavash spread with rosemary-apricot butter; smoked salmon and egg salad on tomato bread with dill cream, sprinkled with capers and red onion; shrimp-crab-mango salad on scallion brioche with lime-chipotle spread; and cucumber, tomato, and a schmeer of herbed boursin on plain brioche. Baked goods range from scones and tea bread with strawberry jam and lemon curd, to desserts that change weekly: spicy pumpkin tart, perhaps, and cool retro pineapple-coconut cake, and chocolate fondant, washed down with a pot of your choice of 10 teas (including black currant, Darjeeling, and jasmine). There’s even a cherry on top: one Kir Royale (Champagne infused with crème de cassis) for toasting your inner Brahmin.

Meanwhile, though still fairly new to the teatime game, L’Espalier serves a spread that’s as indulgent as it gets, short of including opium in golden pipes carried in on tasseled silk pillows. Take Red Riding Hood’s Basket ($32): if its contents were at all what the Brothers Grimm imagined, their fairy tale would have had a happy ending, since the wolf wouldn’t have wasted calories on the kid. Instead, he’d have noshed on her canapés: lime-grilled lobster with chili aïoli; goat cheese–pistachio truffles; foie gras torchon with a relish of cranberries, apples, and pecans. And nibbled her classic tea sandwiches: cucumber–cream cheese; smoked salmon with mâche; ham and Camembert. And sampled her currant scones, served with clotted cream, honey, and jam. And her sweets: coconut macaroons, hazelnut-raisin cookies, and cinnamon-rum madeleines; chocolate-dipped strawberries and white chocolate–mint truffles; swan-shaped pastries and chestnut-chocolate torte. Of course, the basket also contains a pot of tea (a selection of eight includes elderflower, oolong jade, and wild mint), but those who are lupine for wine can throw in a glass of brut rosé for $18 extra to make this ending all the happier.

Then again, if tea is not in fact your cup of tea, maybe one of the city’s most sumptuous signature dishes will better serve as the object of your culinary desire. Locke-Ober’s famed lobster Savannah ($62), for instance. Against the backdrop of the equally famous dining room, all carved mahogany and stained glass, only concoctions as rich as this could possibly stand out: it’s made of the meat of a two-pound lobster, first sautéed with butter, cream, and sherry; then simmered with a mixture of lobster stock, cream, and more sherry, as well as shallots, garlic, wild mushroom, red peppers, and the lobster’s own tomalley; and finally stuffed back in its shell, sprinkled with parsley and parmesan, and finished under the broiler. Just think of the company in which you’ll be upon taking a bite — Cabots, Lodges, Kennedys ...

Of course, if you’ve already got all the company you want, you might make it official over the Oak Room’s Tableside Châteaubriand for Two ($86). In yet another splendid setting — high-ceilinged and hung with crystal chandeliers — one of the old guard of Beantown steak houses ceremoniously serves up its enormous center-cut tenderloin along with two sauces (merlot demiglace and béarnaise, the classic tarragon-tinged egg sauce), asparagus, and your choice of potato: baked, smashed, au gratin, or fried with onions. Or would you rather canoodle over caviar? At the Federalist — not generally known for traditionalism, despite its sedate décor — the caviar service is classic, indeed romantically so: an ounce of pungent gray sevruga ($65) or golden, nutty osetra ($85) calls for blini besprinkled with such fixings as capers, minced red onion, and chopped hard-cooked egg, along with dollops of crème fraîche.

For a final splittable splurge, try the piatto di frutti di mare at new North End raw bar Neptune Oyster, a smart little spot on Salem Street with an old-fashioned wharf-side aura. Between the etched plate-glass façade and the elegant pressed-tin ceiling, the mirrored walls and wood trim, you’d half-expect the barkeep to don a handlebar mustache and shirtsleeves. Actually, not so much — but rest assured that whatever expectations the setting creates for a sparklingly pure and simple assortment of shellfish will be more than met. The Triton ($45) presents six Wellfleet oysters and six clams (three littlenecks and three cherrystones) on the half-shell, as well as two crab claws, two shrimp, half a lobster tail, and garlic-steamed mussels (of course, cocktail sauce and a mignonette or two arrive on the side for dipping). Meanwhile, the Neptune, at $75, nearly doubles the portions — so if the conventional wisdom regarding shellfish’s aphrodisiacal powers is even half true, you may fall right back into triple-X-fantasy mode.

If your tastes run toward tapas-style small plates rather than grand gleaming platters, there’s only one way to go for the gusto: order the dégustation. A multi-course menu is an occasion for not merely conspicuous but also perspicacious consumption, providing a sort of edible overview of the chef’s skills and sensibilities as well as developing a harmony the careful diner can discern from dish to dish. Justly celebrated in this wise is the chef’s tasting at No. 9 Park. Available in several different guises — a six- or eight-course lunch, with a paired wine flight ($74/$96) or without ($48/$64), and a seven- or nine-course dinner with wine ($135/$185) or without ($85/$110) — Barbara Lynch’s menu provides a lavish introduction to her French-influenced fondness for offal, fowl, and fungi. Lunch, for instance, unfolds something like this: you start off with a soupçon of sweet bay scallops laced with prosciutto in velouté (a rich white sauce), followed by a (relatively) traditional lobster thermidor. Next come tiny gnocchi, pungently paired with black truffles and mimolette (a pleasingly sharp, hard, red-orange aged cheese from northern France). Then come the obligatory glandular organs: foie gras arrives in a terrine accompanied by apple gelée, walnut vinaigrette, and honey, while crispy sweetbreads attend rabbit sausage, along with delicata squash (a butternut-like winter variety) and celery root. Similarly earthy is the pheasant that follows — both breast and leg meat alongside lady apples and turnips. And now you cleanse your palate with cranberry granité in anticipation of dessert: first, creamy black-pepper cheesecake offset by tart green-apple sorbet, and finally, a chocolate pastry called rissole with sultanas, pecans, and a rum-raisin glace. And all the while you’ve been sipping cuvée and Vouvray, nebbiolo and Moscato d’Asti.