Eating out is always an expensive let down.

My pet hate is where they have a set menu and then half the dishes have additional costs to order - just compile a fucking menu for the price stated ! And don’t get me started on the cost of steak sauces - some almost £5 , same for some sourdough or a side of veg

I like to do a little of both. I love Avo on toast with poached eggs on top. However, I would never order it off a bistro menu. Mine is much better. I love my avo with fresh lime juice and chopped fresh red chilli mixed through. I like my poached eggs on the top,to be perfectly soft. However. As another poster said,it's great to pick something you wouldn't cook at home. Also to not have to prep and clear away the food. Eating out is too expensive to do all the time but it's great for a special treat. A good way to keep the cost reasonable is to avoid the wine in restaurants. Always pricey . I don't often do desserts either. I make a nice Affogato at home instead!

I agree to an extent, went for breakfast with my friend recently and my mushroom omelette and coffee was just shy of £14

Lovely cafe interior and friendly staff but I won't be going again. I knew the prices when I ordered but what I chose was one of the cheaper breakfasts on the menu, a full English was £13.50 and did not include a tea / coffee

I do like a Toby carvery though and only go when I have a discount code.

I select where l go for a meal but what l often find disappointing is the dessert I.e cake looking lovely but very little taste and very expensive.

I’m truly over dining out. I will do it for an occasion but I’m barely ever delighted. I’ve eaten in the fanciest of restaurants and I do love the theatre of fine dining but I resent the ridiculous tipping policies. Paying £500 for a meal and then being expected to tip £100…that feels like a tax for stupid rich people. Mid range restaurants - I always feel like I could cook way better, way cheaper at home. And I don’t want to eat at junk food chains … I think it’s just my age 😂

Yes, sadly our experiences too lately. After covid, prices have risen enormously and standards of service have fallen sharply, as has the quality of the food. That's across the board, whether in relatively expensive restaurants, pub food, chains, and fast food franchises. We've really reduced the number of times we eat out as it was getting to the stage where most of the experiences were poor for one reason or another.

If we're going to get crap service, poor food quality, etc., then we may as well just stay in and cook our own food. Even when we're away, which is usually in self catering holiday homes, we're cooking more and more evening meals in the accommodation whereas a few years ago, we'd only have breakfasts and would be eating out for lunches and evening meals every day.

That doesn't seem too expensive to me. Were they well filled toasted sandwiches? Coffee here is £3.75.

Especially if you are on a very restricted budget. in that case you wouldn't be eating out!

We eat out regularly, anywhere from the local coffee lounge for a coffee and panini to local independent gastro type pubs or Italian/thai/tapas, we prefer independent places rather than chain restaurants.

We don’t eat at high end places as I don’t have enough of a sophisticated palate to appreciate the food. We did eat at a Michelin listed place nearby and I didn’t feel it was worth the cost, although we did have a special treat at a different local restaurant which cost nearly £200 for two of us and we both felt it was worth every penny as it was so delicious and service was top notch.

I also tend to order something I either can’t be arsed to cook at home or would be costly to buy all the various ingredients, such as a Thai meal.

It’s ruined for me because my husband is a fantastic cook. He is retired, so has time most days and if he doesn’t want to cook, or has been busy, there is always something in the freezer from a batch cook. Essentially, he’s ruined me for any other chef 😜

I worked in a lot of kitchens in pubs and restaurants as a teen/student and every time there was a roast on offer, the 'roast' potatoes were fried. Not fine dining places of course, but I suspect a lot of pubs and lower end restaurants do that now.

I ordered the only vegetarian option at a restaurant last year,and at £18 something it was more expensive than the fish dishes (it was a fish orientated place).

What I got was about 4 small new potatoes and a small dish of tomato sauce with a few gloopy stringy bits of aubergine floating about in it. I was raiding the cupboards not long after getting home because I was so hungry.

I understand, that's not the restaurant a vegetarian would choose however if you're going to have an option at least make it something worth eating? Vegetarians/vegans aren't social pariahs or hermits, we go to places with other people sometimes!

When I cba to cook and want a treat, my 'go to' these days are posh ready meals from Cook or M&S (or even the nice supermarket ones). Much cheaper than takeaways/eating out. We still go out but mainly for coffee.

The exception is pizza. Nothing I can make or a supermarket can offer comes close to the pizza offered by a good pizzeria.

OP, I suspect you are out of practice in choosing restaurants and what dishes to order. You will feel better about the experience after you have worked out what you like at that price point.

We never eat out, literally never. I'm a keen cook and there are so many additives in 'bought' food I don't trust it. I want to know what we're eating and I'd be greeting all the way home if we were paying silly prices for something that could be twice as good and less than half the price if it were homemade.

I like their pizzas too. Last time I went I asked for a certain drink, they said they'd ran out. Then I saw another table getting one!

I flagged someone else down and asked again and they got me one.
They brought the wrong starter out (they'd given ours to a different table who accepted it) we waited a stupidly long time for our main course.I asked for a glass of wine half way through the meal and I was still waiting for it when we'd finished and wanted to go so I told them not to bother in the end. They weren't busy at all. Just puts me off-makes me think they're all about justeat and ubereats and whatever now-I realise It's a chain restaurant but It's still a restaurant! Which implies some sort of service is to be expected, especially as It's not cheap-not expensive of course but not cheap.

The fact that yours is better is interesting however and means that if I am in a different town, I might give them another chance

Go to a Weatherspoons- the food is good although not sophisticated but you can get a decent meal and a drink for less than a tenner! No wonder they're always full. I feel that most restaurants these days are trying to squeeze every last penny from you. If they reduced their costs they'd make up the difference with more customers.

He only owns 22% doesn't he?

Strongly disagree. The Zizzi I occasionally go to has delicious food, and I love their long thin pizzas. You can tell when the chefs know what they are doing and have passion in their job. I also enjoy dining out at an Indian restaraunt. It is very rare I have ever had a meal out and been disappointed/felt it was a waste of time.

The trouble with Waetherspoons (for me) is that it's run by Mr Brexit, so we avoid unless absolutley desperate.

Another vote for good old 'spoons. I hope some folk who sneer or haven't tried it might patronise them more after reading this thread.

I am in love with their Sauv Blanc which helps, 😂but they provide meals that are worth the price. They're never going to be gourmet cuisine, and of course a lot of it is microwaved, but they're a fair price for what you get and it is is perfectly acceptable food, tastes good and there's a lot of healthy options as well as options for different diets and a lot of satisfying meals. They give decent service too IME.

The point is, you get what you pay for, which is more than can be said for a lot of places.

I eat out quite a lot. I go on minibreaks and meet my Mum for lunch a couple of times a month, go for pub meals with friends, go to the local fine dining places with family-and I am still voting spoons as top in value for money.

Second would be my local fine dining place-yes It's vastly more expensive than 'spoons but you are again, getting what you pay for, beautifully cooked food prepared from scratch and excellent service. Not somewhere I could afford to visit often and if I am honest I prefer casual dining, I am not a huge fan of people fussing over me and I like to be able to relax and stay as long as I want for a chat and some more drinks if we want, I am going out. But they're good, they care about the customer, it isn't a rip off.

Bottom is unfortunately local family ran places. Nothing wrong with them but they're just too expensive and not worth the money. E.G I don't eat meat-the only dish suitable for me at two local Italians is a version of pasta Neapolitan. Best part of £20 for a bowl of pasta with some (admittedly better than a jar) tomato sauce. I can go to spoons and get something far more interesting than that for half the price or I can pay a bit more and get something far better. A pasta dish like that is something I might make at home if I can't be bothered cooking or need to use ingredients up, it's not a meal I want while I am out.

Chains aren't much better. Went to Zizzi's recently, food was good but service was crap. At least in spoons you're not paying for a restaurant experience so you don't expect one!

Don't get me started on TGI Friday's! Went there recently (friend's choice). Fajita was about 99% onions. I spent a lot of time trying to pick bits out from a mass of them and when I'd finished there was basically a meal sized portion of onions left over. I don't want to spend my time doing that while I am out. Another time (partner's choice) recently we were seating on a teeeeny table, again I ordered fajitas and with my partner's plate and a couple of drinks it was difficult to not knock things off. It was also bloody freezing. Not a pleasnt dining experience and £££ for the portion size-fine to have smaller portions if the food is brilliant, but it wasn't. A VERY small glass of (likely very cheap crap) wine was more expensive than at the fine dining place mentioned above!! Just, WHAT?! I stuck to diet coke and I love my wine with a meal usually.

Tortillas so small you couldn't wrap the filling up properly or pick up your fajita without getting sauce on your hands and/or dropping food all down yourself.

Total rip off IMO.

I prefer an independent to a chain as I think chains are as likely to be hit and miss as an independent. I've had good nandos, bad nandos and bloody awful nandos depending on location.
With independents you just need to do some research first, find out where is popular with the locals, has something been there a long time chances are then it's going to be good at what it does.
Eating out for me is a treat and often the reason of the outing rather than just eating because you are out over a mealtime. I think a lot of people who are eating out are just looking to fill a hole and food establishments have declined in quality over the years because they can get away with being subpar as long as they are not awful.

That is good but sadly very unusual. We might actually eat out if more restaurants were like that

Well presumably it is if you pick a meal you don’t like as you appear to have done.
DH is an excellent cook so if we go for a meal we tend to be pretty conscious of where we’re going, and I don’t mean super expensive fancy food as I’m too fussy for that anyway.

Yes, they do. It's stunning. It's small and the chef is a really good one. We went to a larger local restaurant for our Christmas work meal. It was awful and you could tell the roast potatoes were frozen ones. There was just no taste to anything.