Vintage Cave Honolulu opened in 2012 as an exclusive “private society” dining experience in a dark brick “cave” below Shirokiya, where members and their guests could dine amid Picassos, Daum and Lalique crystal and other works of fine art. The starting price for its elegant multicourse dinners was $300 per person.

With the opening of Shirokiya’s Japan Village Walk food court on the lower level of Ala Moana Center comes Vintage Cave for the masses in the form of Wagyu Plaza, featuring six counters that the company describes as “boutique restaurants,” and Seafood Plaza, with eight counters.

The plazas break new ground in Honolulu as the first food-court restaurants to offer $25-to-$45 entrees. I guess the idea is to allow more people to indulge in a Vintage Cave experience at a fraction of the cost.

If only the experiences were remotely comparable.

Anyone with $100 to blow on dinner for two would likely prefer going to a pleasant sit-down restaurant rather than compete with 899 other diners (the space seats 900) for a table with uncomfortable wooden benches. But I could be just speaking for myself. After all, Honolulu teems with people who actively seek out establishments with lines out the door. They’re the ones who’ll be getting in your way as you navigate the 32 Japan Village Walk food kiosks offering everything from to-go bentos to takoyaki, okonomiyaki, sweet and savory crepes and desserts. And if you can’t find a table, you’re out of luck for now. They didn’t consider takeout.

Japan Village Walk was created in the image of Monzen-machi, Japan’s temple towns, where shrines and small stores line the streets. A Guardian Spirits Sanctuary sits in one corner of the food court but offers little serenity from the hungry mobs.

Lining the two walls and corners closest to the mall are Vintage Cave’s Wagyu Plaza and Seafood Plaza, each broken up into various specialty kitchens. Wagyu Plaza’s kiosks loosely break down into steak specialties, deep-fried cutlets, curry, soups, shabu-shabu and sukiyaki, and chicken and pork dishes.

Seafood Plaza’s individual shops specialize in tempura and fried seafood, stews, sashimi and carpaccio, broiled dishes, simmered dishes, paella, hot pots and salads.

At upscale restaurants, densely marbled wagyu beef is prized and treated with reverence, served in a way that showcases its juicy, velvety texture to best advantage, to perpetuate the desirability of wagyu. There’s none of that special treatment on display here, which eliminates foodies from the customer base because they can find better elsewhere.

The restaurant might as well use chuck and halve the cost to diners who simply crave a taste of beef, any old beef. You certainly don’t need to use the best beef if you’re going to serve it katsu style ($19 for 100 grams, or 3-1/2 ounces, $32 for 200 grams), buried under curry ($28 for 150 grams) or the double whammy, katsu curry ($28). Some of the best offerings are plain grilled steaks, at $35/$20 for rib eye and $32/$19 for strip loin. These are accompanied by veggies and served with a pat of butter. There’s a tendency toward overcooking on the smaller portions, so if your desired doneness is medium-rare, asking for it to be cooked rare might get you to your goal.

Even at these prices you get no special treatment. Like a hunter-gatherer squirrel, you’ll have to dash to drink refrigerators within the food court to pick up something to quench your thirst, and pay for it at the place you ordered your food. If it’s not too busy, the cashier will run your finished order to you … provided you can find a table and they can find you. There’s no table marker system in place, so they might end up yelling your name up and down the busy aisles. I don’t know about you, but I like my life to be easy, and I don’t need mealtime to be a challenge.

The only way this experience could be worth the $28-to-$45 asking prices is if the area were cordoned off and table service were offered. Even so, too many full-service restaurants offer excellence at similar price points to make this a serious choice. Right now it’s a love-the-one-you’re-with option for shoppers who want to dine in place.

The situation is a little more palatable at Seafood Plaza, where the photo menus of chirashi, sashimi and seafood stews beckon. Also, we’re accustomed to paying high prices for sushi platters and seafood dishes, so few people would blink an eye at a $25 seafood order.

I was satisfied with a $22 tempura bowl with white rice (there’s no other starch option). The price included one piece of shrimp, white fish, a mixed fritter of scallops and chopped shrimp, and eel with the muddy taste of lake fish.

A seafood paella ($28) was also palatable, although the saffron rice outshone bland shellfish. It did get a lot of stares and comments like, “That looks great,” from gawkers looking for something good to eat.

My beef here is with unknowledgeable staffers who have no idea what they’re serving, another blow to the Vintage Cave name. I overheard one manager talking to a potential hire, saying he had to replace a guy who burned water.

I was interested in a dish of uni, but I’m picky about the kind of uni I’m eating, preferring sweetness over brininess. But when I asked where the uni came from, I was given a series of meaningless answers, from “the fish market” to “local vendors” to, finally, “the ocean.” If I’m paying that much for food, I don’t want sass back.

Restaurant labor might be in short supply, but that doesn’t excuse a staff that has no clue as to why someone paying $25 for a dish might want to know where their food is from. You can bet that a good sushi bar would be staffed by people who know the difference between bafun and purple uni sourced from Japan, and that from Hawaii versus Santa Barbara, Calif.

A diffusion brand can be a good idea. It works in fashion, when people introduced to a brand at a lower price point might graduate to a higher-end line. But it doesn’t work when the philosophy and integrity are not the same.