Eating out is always an expensive let down.

Yes! And do you often find that the Yorkshire puddings are rock hard?!

I'm confused. If you didn't want ingredients such as eggs and bread, why would you order eggs on toast?

Avo toast is brunch out rather than going out for an evening meal. If you are veggie/vegan a lot of meals out can be a bit of a compromise which is sad given how many people are vegetarian or vegan.

I don't understand those talking about wanting to eat healthy when going out. It's a non diet day/treat food if going out for a meal.

and takeaways are a total waste of money.

Don’t agree OP, sorry! I live in Italy though so the scene is a bit different. I can take dinner out to for €20 here and eat pretty well. That said, I got a SLICE of pizza in Dublin recently with my sister and it was the same price as a whole pizza in Rome 😳

all of my local restaurants disappoint me with the food they service, with the exception of a very cheap pub where you get what you pay for it and it does what it says on the tin, so to speak. All other restaurants I can make better at home. Total waste of money, certainly not value for money or worth the money.

It is expensive to eat out and like many others here, I try to avoid ordering things I could make myself for a fraction of the price. For instance, I always used to order pasta but I don't now, as some places charge up to £20 for a plate of pasta and tomato sauce that you could make at home for about £2.00 and feed the whole family with. I love eating out though purely because someone else cooks it, brings it to the table and washes up afterwards! If I was a rich, I would employ someone to do this for me every day. My very own Jeeves. 😀

I'm afraid I can't think of many less appealing meals than hotpot with red cabbage! 🤢

Ok 6 times.

Op, you’ve mentioned cost and money no less than 5 times now. It is very clearly the issue.

if you cannot afford to eat out, or resent the money, do not do it. No one is frog march in you into cafes and demanding you order avocado on toast for 13 pounds at 3 pm, if was a proactive choice you made.

We've got some fantastic restaurants in my area. Especially family owned Italians and Indians. You're clearly going to the wrong places.

I don't understand the point of this post at all! So you ordered the food, you must have known how much it was? Are you saying parts of it were missing? In that case, why didn't you mention it at the time? I wouldn't have paid full price for half a meal!

We eat out somewhere nice once a month as a rule, my personal favourite is Syrian, not cheap, but always tasty and always consistent. And we're lucky that we live not that far from a host of beautiful Indian restaurants. If I go over to my friends and we eat out, it's the Chinese buffet near her. It's clean, tidy and so much choice! The food is actually how I remember proper Chinese food to be. Chinese buffets are sadly few and far between these days.
I find takeaways have really dropped in quality and service and are definitely overpriced and inconsistent!

Honestly, OP, you’re emerging as someone who doesn’t emerge into the world a lot — avocado toast on sourdough is pretty standard cafe fare and has been for quite some time. I wouldn’t order it in a cafe, because I can make it better at home, and I like it with chopped fresh chillies, but it’s not new or ‘weird’.

I appreciate that if you’re on a tight budget then a disappointing order is really disappointing, but surely that’s all the more reason for choosing where you eat very carefully, and what you order once there? And restaurants and cafes are absolutely struggling with rising costs. Several good, popular, long-established places near me closed in 2024 because they couldn’t make a living.

I wouldn't eat omelettes and sandwiches and stuff like that when I eat out. It has to be something I'd never easily be able to create at home. So like Vietnamese catfish, morning glory, Thai curries, Pakistani tandoori etc. with lots of ingredients I don't usually use. Or meat that I don't have at home. I wouldn't order something like salmon, it's too boring and easy to cook. I like ordering pork, game, quail, squid, langoustines etc.
So I could see why an avocado and feta toast might seem a bit of a rip off.

I'm quite happy to pay for something well-cooked and completely different to anything I can do myself at home.

Pub Sunday roasts are another matter, though - no matter how seductively the menu is written, the actual food tends to be disappointing, especially the roast potatoes, which are often "chewy".

For us eating out is usually only when meeting up with family/friends, so TBH the food is somewhat secondary. We rarely choose very high-end eateries - we’ve been to enough of those in the past and have not been impressed with the enjoyment of the food compared to the expense!

I loathe the term but maybe it’s different if you’re a ‘foodie’.

I find it depends on where you go and what you order.
8.5/10 times my food is really good.
I stay away from foods I make regularly, because I'm a good cook, so always compare.
My friend also told me that if you're buying a particular cuisine and the clienetele is not heavily 'native', don't bother - it's not that good.

Just out of interest what do you think would have been a fair price ?

So you went to a cafe, saw avocado and feta on toast for £13 on a menu, ordered it, and were then annoyed to receive avocado and feta on toast for £13 because you would have preferred to share one tuna baguette with a friend? And from this you've extrapolated that 'eating out is always an expensive letdown'?

OK.

Best to go for something you cannot make as well yourself. Pizza is one. There is a small chain called Rudy's near us that do neopolitan style. So good and reasonable prices compared to Pizza Express.

Another one is Dishoom for Indian style. Everything tastes amazing and very cool setting (not cheap admittedly).

Every town has a few really good places so I would just stick to those few places. Obviously in cities there are probably a hundred very good places but if you know of 10 very good places close to you, you can visit on rotation and are sorted but maybe occasionally try a new place if you have heard it's amazing.

We’re currently on holiday near Wales. Eating out is a rare treat atm, so was really disappointed by yesterdays cafe lunch of soup which tasted overwhelmingly of stock.

thought a brownie after might help, but it was dry.

eating out can be so hit and miss.

Me and the kids agree - we still eat out sometimes, but to save us effort, rather than as a treat. We can normally cook better at home for cheaper.

Especially since I have boy tweens who both eat adult sized meals these days (the eldest has hollow legs)