A meal can taste expensive because of the room in which it is served.

The room does a lot of the tasting. Lighting, quiet, the weight of the cutlery, the sense of occasion all get absorbed into what you call flavour, and the same food in a different setting will honestly taste different to you. Context is not a distortion of the experience; it is part of it.

You can use this rather than resent it. Making an ordinary meal into a good one is often a matter of the setting rather than the cooking: the table cleared, a candle, the phone elsewhere. It costs almost nothing. And it is worth remembering when you are paying for something, since some of what you buy in an expensive room is the room.