I'm in-between two minds. On one end £9 of labour cost for a plate of asparagus seems deeply inefficient and unrealistic, particularly when the cost of ingredients that also include (hard) labour is £2. On the other, just a century ago being served quality food in a nicely decorated place was exclusively the privilege of aristocrats.
I just see it as conspicuous consumption. If you want to pay 200 Zorkmids for someone to wash some oograh in duck's tears and then marinate it in bird's milk before cooking it over a wood fire made with Mongolian teak flown in fresh that morning then good for you, but are you really getting a better meal than the 10 Zorkmid plate from my local favourite restaurant or just setting fire to a pile of money to prove you can afford fancier wank than your neighbour?
“On one end £9 of labour cost for a plate of asparagus seems deeply inefficient and unrealistic”
Every time I’ve had this thought that I could recreate a dish and spend a lot less, I end up paying more for the same dish, with lower quality and I still have to do the dishes. It might not be as unrealistic as it seems if you aggregate the wages of all staff involved and divide it by the number of plates they serve over a night. I’m not a cook, but if someone offered me $9 to prepare them a comparable asparagus dish, it doesn’t sound that lucrative.
As a broke PhD student, my conclusion was that I just need to cook more. As pointed out in the article, the ingredients cost a small fraction of the price of the dish. Yes, its a bit time consuming but its also interesting to make different dishes, and many things like lasagna or biriyani can be batch cooked. There's a lot of really interesting dishes that don't take a whole lot of time per portion.
Lately I’ve been finding most restaurant dishes “low quality”: in particular, less meat and tastes overcooked compared to what I make at home, though grains and vegetables are also blander.
I suspect this is more me being a harsher critic than restaurants enshittifying. I’ve been improving my cooking. I do get premium ingredients, that sometimes cost much more than the cheapest alternative, but still always much less than even low-end restaurants.
So my conclusion is, if you like good food you should cook yourself. Maybe if you’re rich enough to always eat at especially expensive restaurants, but even then I think you’d prefer a private chef.
I thought this was going to be about the actual dish-ware, not food.
I remember one of the few newer fancy/expensive restaurants in San Francisco that survived the 2000 dot-com crash did so in part by dropping their custom-made (along with their restaurant logo) dishes/glasses for normal plain dish-ware.
(They also simplified their menu - still very good, just a bit less exotic)
Very much a UK problem. Almost 10 quid of labour to cook a simple asparagus dish? VAT exceeds price of ingredients. This is why going out to eat is a huge luxury here.
Meanwhile in Asia you can get cooked meals for less than a dollar from a hawker stand or eat a beef bowl or ramen for like 5 dollars in Japan. Why is that?
Seriously ? These are not sympathetic! The first seems like a whole lot of pointless faff for nothing much at all — who needs an emulsion made out of salvaged organic chickpea bubbles — and the second complains about not being allowed to raise prices… yet she can! It’s just that you’d get fewer customers.
Also - this is presumably profit after all the wages are taken out including for owners of the place? If so it kinda depends on what their wages are to know if this whole situation seems super unfair.
This is a typical guardian writing which does not actually reflect the business of restaurants.
Rent and Staffing cost are fixed / operational, and half of the energy cost as well since you will need to turn light and fan on regardless whether you have customers or not.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 27.1 ms ] threadEvery time I’ve had this thought that I could recreate a dish and spend a lot less, I end up paying more for the same dish, with lower quality and I still have to do the dishes. It might not be as unrealistic as it seems if you aggregate the wages of all staff involved and divide it by the number of plates they serve over a night. I’m not a cook, but if someone offered me $9 to prepare them a comparable asparagus dish, it doesn’t sound that lucrative.
I suspect this is more me being a harsher critic than restaurants enshittifying. I’ve been improving my cooking. I do get premium ingredients, that sometimes cost much more than the cheapest alternative, but still always much less than even low-end restaurants.
So my conclusion is, if you like good food you should cook yourself. Maybe if you’re rich enough to always eat at especially expensive restaurants, but even then I think you’d prefer a private chef.
I remember one of the few newer fancy/expensive restaurants in San Francisco that survived the 2000 dot-com crash did so in part by dropping their custom-made (along with their restaurant logo) dishes/glasses for normal plain dish-ware.
(They also simplified their menu - still very good, just a bit less exotic)
Meanwhile in Asia you can get cooked meals for less than a dollar from a hawker stand or eat a beef bowl or ramen for like 5 dollars in Japan. Why is that?
This post puts the price to pay for the luxury in perspective
Also - this is presumably profit after all the wages are taken out including for owners of the place? If so it kinda depends on what their wages are to know if this whole situation seems super unfair.
Rent and Staffing cost are fixed / operational, and half of the energy cost as well since you will need to turn light and fan on regardless whether you have customers or not.