Anyone else sick of mediocre food when eating out?

[Fantasisa]

We had a family meal out on Friday in our local pub - nothing was terrible but no meal was great either just reheated stuff mostly.

We do have a few decent places that we frequent but I find bills for a family are £££ and still nothing beats home cooked food.

Anyone else find eating out a bit meh? DH says I need to lower my expectations.

@BertrandRussell I might try that. I’m not even a particularly keen cook. I do know the local good places to go and usually head there but this was our village pub so wanted to support it. Places change hands as well so once reliably good locations become microwave places.

I don’t bother writing reviews myself, most aren’t so bad the food needs to go back just completely underwhelming.

Yep completely agree. Everything is very meh now. I haven’t been blown away by anything I’ve eaten out for a long time. Would rather just have a McDonald’s- at least it’s consistent and cheap!

I’m finding that chains are serving massive portions of shite, while indies are often serving delicious food in microscopic portions.

Hardly ever eat out now. Shame, I loved it.

I think in many subs you have to stick to simple pub grub like scampi and chips, gammon etc. You know what you'll get. Never order a curry or pasta, it's just reheated shit!

@HaroldsSocalledBluetits we're lucky in our town we have an indoor street food venue. Tables in the middle, stalls around the edge that change every few months or so, and a permanent bar. I hope it becomes more common.

I’m a good cook and i find most things we eat when we are out are disappointing.
I’ve eaten out with BIL/SIL a lot and they will rave about places and the food is just dreadful. I think they have no tastebuds.

I can't remember the last time we ate out at chain restaurant as they always disappoint. We are lucky to live somewhere with a good choice of inde[endent eateries and coffee shops . Our local pub does a fantastic Sunday lunch which is not cheap but still excellent for the money. As we live on home cooking in this household we refuse to part with money for mediocre food in sub standard restaurants.

@ihatesundays - that is always awkward, who can we trust?!

I think there are plenty of crappy pubs and chains which just reheat pre-made stuff you can make better at home. But where I live there are also loads of really good independent restaurants where the food is really good, alongside the usual Indians, there are Thai, Ghurka, Italian, Greek, French, Spanish, Turkish. Most of them are busy and difficult to get a table in as they are so good.

There are loads of great places by me but few of them are pubs. Great Thai, great curries and cheap street food in the market and an independent Italian where everything is cooked in front if you and is delicious. Get your wallet out and go city restaurant and until you get £££ it’s very average.

It depends where you go. There's excellent places if you know where to go and are willing to pay

It's nuts isn't it! There's a local seafood place round here (their trip advisor replies to customers are actually hilarious- but so so rude & arrogant, constant arguing with people!)

They posted one day on Facebook a really sullen, stroppy post about how people are saying their fish is frozen etc & they stated it's all fresh constantly.

THEN they replied to a trip advisor post saying that some of the food is frozen, despite being advertised as fresh, as 'they can't source all fish from U.K. waters'.

Make your mind up😂

There's a lovely local Italian near me that does good food for cheap prices, honestly I've never been blown away by food when I've eaten out, I think the best I've had was a 'homemade' and fresh red pepper and tomato soup with big fluffy 'homemade' wholemeal bread at a garden centre cafe! Was delicious.

Apart from a couple of pubs and a little Italian restaurant doing fairly basic meals really well, nowhere, chain or independent, has really pleased me for a long time. I don't think I'm over fussy either.

There are 5 local country pubs near me and only 1 is good, all fresh homemade food with proper hand cut chips, all under £10 too.
The others are frozen food and tiny portions.

I'm currently at our caravan and the local pub food is amazing, I'm glad I don't live here though because I'd eat there all the time and be 20 stone!

Its really disappointing when you eat out and a tiny microwave meal arrives.

Is it often the mid-price places that are disappointing? I live in a city and the best food here is on the outskirts of town or in more residential areas eg delicious Indian, Lebanese, Mexican. They tend to be cheaper and it's more about the food than the decor. They are not in places where there is massive footfall, so they have had to serve really good food and grow a clientele through word of mouth. In the city centre there are loads of chains and boring pizza and pasta restaurants, which usually cost a lot more. You are obviously paying for their address and the convenience of it being right in town, but the food is often disappointing.

I was finding the same and were a family of 7(me,DH and 5DC)so any meal out costs us alot of money and I don't mind paying as long as it's worth it.

So now I check out the reviews online for any restaurants we want to try that way I'm able to weed out the places that would be a disappointment.

So far it's worked.

This all makes me think we should start complaining more. Perhaps it is the British culture of never complaining that enables all of this crap food and service to flourish.

I agree and I'm also fed up of shit childrens menus. We are away in the UK at the minute so eating out often. No my dd doesn't want burger, nuggets, fishfingers or pizza for every meal. I ask for small portions of adult meals instead and it really confuses the staff. I have ended up sharing my own meal with dd instead, but that looks cheap.

i do think you have to scrutinise menus too, weeding out the "ping cusine" and hoping the soup is not slurry from a can!

I love to cook and we have also been "Dining Out At Home" as bertrand said, buying fancier stuff for home and making more of an effort.

my worst pet hate about this is doing all the right research, trip advisor etc, finding somewhere with excellent reviews, but only discovering when you're there, it's recently changed hands, different chef, and its now crap!

I went to Pizza Express last week and I ordered a pasta dish and it was so obviously a baked ready meal

We finally got around to going to the cute little Thai restaurant around here.

My main was literally Uncle Ben's rice and the jar sweet and sour - I lived off it at uni so I knew what it was! I had about three bites of it as the chicken was awful too - the waitress didnt give me eye contact as she collected the plates.

That's just one example recently - we eat out a loot but now I'm over it.

I've worked at an independent restaurant, I'd say 30% of the menu was homemade, the rest is ready prepped wholesale. It's all just garnishes and swirled sauce to make it look fancy. There's just no time to make everything from scratch.

Totally, food out in lots of places is a bit meh and overpriced. We eat much nicer stuff at home. Same with take away, so expensive and usually shite.

We have a pub near us...it's a nice place. A Sunday lunch for us, a family of four, is over £100! Thats with soft drinks, maybe a single beer for oh, and puddings for kids only.

Food is ok but nothing that much better than I can do at home for less than £20.

Eating out in the UK is very expensive.