Do restaurants really serve microwaved 'ready meals'?

[AtleastitsnotMonday]

As it says really. This has come up several times on threads about eating out recently. Basically people saying they are not paying restaurant price for microwaved food. Is this really true? What's the point in having chefs if it's a case of sticking things in a microwave? Surely they wouldn't get away with it. It's often mentioned in discussion about pasta dishes in Italian chain restaurants, surely buying in ready made meals would cost them a whole lot more that cooking a bit of pasta and sauce anyway.

Yes I think quite a lot of chain restaurants do this

Yes I think quite a lot of chain restaurants do this

My cousin used to work at pizza hut and the pasta dishes were reheated in the microwave, not cooked fresh.

Not sure how true this is but I heard that The Ivy restaurants do this. Not the OG one in London but all the rest. Put me off.

It saves waste I suppose. There are chefs in my family who are appalled but ill equipped kitchens, low wages and barely qualified chefs mean it makes sense for some chains.
Certain chains insist on it so they get continuity. Basically if you went in a Punch pub in Yorkshire and ordered lasagne and went in a punch pub in Stoke and ordered the lasagne you would be getting the exact same tasting meal. You wouldn’t be saying ‘it doesn’t taste like the one we have in our local’

Well it depends where you go. I’ve worked in catering / restaurants all my life (management) from rough pubs in South London to 4/5 star hotels etc. Generally you get what you pay for really. Certainly in some of the pubs if you order a macaroni cheese it’s essentially not a lot different to what you’d get if you got a Tesco ready made one - and it’s usually either ordered in or batch cooked and frozen and then whacked in the oven or grill as needed. But - some of the places I’ve worked have had amazing chefs and things have been cooked from scratch to order.

Yes it’s true, and a lot of the ones that don’t do that use bought in sous vide products.

Well someone’s buying all this stuff…www.brake.co.uk/meal-solutions

I went to a Fayre and Square and ordered a roast dinner (in hindsight I should have realised they wouldn't be making a roast dinner fresh on a Thursday at 9pm ) it was absolutely a microwave meal just like the ones you get from Iceland, only thing missing was the plastic compartmentalised plate.

Depends on the type of restaurant, some chains do it via a central kitchen and then get sent out and they just need to be reheated. I've worked in some non chain pubs and restaurants that buy the ready meal type thing off a supplier.

Chef Mike is usually the hardest working member of staff in a lot of chain restaurants and pubs!

Some are more a hybrid where some of it is bought in and some is made in house so for example a filled ravioli would be bought in to save on time but mostly to ensure consistency too. A sauce might be made on site with a few ingredients but a more complex one might be made to the spec of the restaurant and shipped out.

Good chefs are hard to find and expensive if some of the items weren;t like this there would be significantly less choice

Yes. That’s how places like weatherspoons keep costs down. They can hire anyone to just microwave food, they don’t need actual trained chefs

It is quite easy to test…

Order a dish but ask for a small modification- eg if they have penne and vegetable sauce, and spaghetti bolognaise, ask for the spag bol but with penne instead of penne

If they absolutely can’t do it, it’s because both dishes have arrived ready to microwave

I learned this in a pub that offered cheese omelettes and ham omelettes. But couldn’t do a cheese and ham omelette because both came ready made

I don't really know why this is considered such a problem. As PP says you wouldn't ever get consistency otherwise and provided the "ready meal" is good quality (or the quality you've paid for) why isn't it OK?

I had an M&S macaroni and cheese from a Costa recently and that was a ready meal they heated up.

Yep, I think if you're paying less than £15 or so for a main meal, it's been pinged or frozen/fried.

I remember once when we went out to what we thought was a "good" local pub/restaurant, and the meals came out one at a time very slowly. When we asked the waitress why it was so slow, she said "we've only got one working microwave"!

No place I've been to. Wouldn't a nuked meal be soggy ?

Absolutely they do, that's one of the main reasons I rarely eat out .. I went to a fairly expensive restaurant in London recently which prided itself on it's 'Belgian inspired fare' ... think moules frites.. rotisserie chicken etc. I ordered the chicken, it was just reheated roast chicken ... so disappointing... I wasn't charged after I complained and didn't eat it .. but not what I expected for a night out in London.

I can remember 35 or so years ago when going to TGIF was a real treat, lovely, freshly cooked food (yes, American style but done well) .. but that no longer happens.

My friend has an award winning restaurant that only uses bought in food. Its all stored in freezers and microwaved at the time. The soup is a powder that you add water to. No one would ever know these shortcuts as it's beautifully presented. My friend has been in the business a long time and says that this is the only way to make money.

Yes.

Chain restaurants in particular

Friend got her Wetherspoons curry with the rice still in the plastic bag. They also could do fried eggs but not poached because the poached ones came in bags and they’re run out.

Everything in pizza express is boil in the bag (risotto etc) and the rest is just cook from frozen 🤢

I think Gordon Ramsay's pub was accused of this.

But yes, chain restaurants have contracts for supply of ready meals. It's how they ensure "consistency".

Yep weatherspoon, but it is really cheap, and the two in my city are always packed because so cheap.