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.

@LolaButt I had no idea canned mac and cheese existed

i wulnt have belived it twenty years ago but yeah they do-some taste beter than others-ask for something slightly different on a dish and you can tell if its micorwaved if they say they cant do it

Very interesting thread. I wouldn't have a problem with batch-cooked frozen food or food pre-prepared and then finished off/warmed up before serving; but the idea of mass factory-made ready meals from Brakes isn't very appetising.

I get that much of what you're paying for is the location and ambience, but it seems very dishonest to me if you're going to somewhere called a 'restaurant' and then you get an Iceland-type ready-meal, albeit charged at a hefty premium. I think it's the catering equivalent of paying to see a popstar live in concert and then them just miming to a CD.

I also don't get what's so amazing about consistency of product - unless you have very particular dietary requirements, wouldn't it be a good thing if the same dish is slightly nuanced at different restaurants, albeit all of them done well by skilled chefs? DO we really despise individuality now?

I've even been stung by some carveries, where they use frozen roast potatoes etc. I fully appreciate that, if I choose the roast beef meal from 30 other options on a Wednesday evening, it will be a mainly pre-prepared meal; but when all they are doing on a Sunday is carveries, it's extremely poor form to use frozen roast potatoes or packet mash, imo.

That’s because Costa sell M&S ready meals and it should have been clear what you were going to get

Well, this has got me rethinking our eating out at Center parcs plan.

There are at least two big differences between home-cooked/restaurant kitchen-cooked food and factory-made food. There's often something about the way factory-made food tastes which is quite different - down to heat treatment? Also, of course, there are all sorts of additives in factory-made food that most of us wouldn't even have access to at home, let alone want to use. Emulsifiers, fillers, colouring, artificial flavouring and so on.

Vegetarians have been saying this for decades. You’ll find it goes through phases. It used to be lasagne, then it was goats cheese and butternut squash, now it’s burgers.

At the start of lockdown I was given a 3kg pack of beef in chianti from a well known chain resta4rant by my local community centre, despite assuring them I wasn't 'needy' - they were still trying to sort out local distribution. No doubt that would have been microwaved as required.
It was delicious - if served it in a restaurant I wouldn't have been saying 'err, that's microwaved' I wouldn.t have had any idea.
I doubt they pop out to tesco for microwave meals - although that might make sense for small cafes.

When I was a student I worked at Morrisons in the cafe. The lasagne, cottage pie, curry, chilli were microwaved. And if we were low on stock we fetched more from the shop floor!

It’s obvious the pasta dishes in Pizza Express are ready made and just heated up and the pizza dough is not made on site.

I thought this too. However just back from Italy . We ate in a well reviewed restaurant and the staff were completely the difference.
Greeted with big smiles despite it being small and packed. Not in a American fake way but just in a we are going to make this good for you way. Second enthusiastic waiter recommended a great wine, best thing on the menu, had a quick chat and you felt like you were in a friends house having dinner, not being fleeced by a what is a of course a business. Which we weren’t because the bill was less than we paid for all the other polite, service by numbers places we had been to before.
I think you need to experience it to appreciate the difference.

I also don't get what's so amazing about consistency of product - unless you have very particular dietary requirements, wouldn't it be a good thing if the same dish is slightly nuanced at different restaurants, albeit all of them done well by skilled chefs? DO we really despise individuality now?

I think a lot of people do just want pretty much the same thing every time, though. They’re maybe not actually all that interested in food, don’t like unexpected flavours/textures, or don’t taste much difference between something that’s been lovingly prepared over many hours or something that came out of a jar. Or they’re not actually focusing on the food all that much and it’s more about getting out and about, socialising/drinking with friends or keeping the children busy/quiet for an hour. Or they’ve got budgetary constraints and they’d rather go out once a week than once every six months. That’s fair enough.

In a chain restaurant consistency is important - it’s part of the brand. If you never knew what you were going to get that type of restaurant wouldn’t do nearly as well, I don’t think.

You forgot the trusty mushroom risotto!!

And people wonder why we hardly ever bother eating out.

Another important point is that some things re-heat perfectly well in a microwave. Many other things really do not!

I don’t mind eating from the former category. The latter, no thanks!

Mussels if you're not in a seaside town are most likely Brakes' frozen bagged ones. There are a few meals which those of us who have worked in enough establishments recognise as from the brakes catalogue, and this is the one that sticks in my mind the most.

@gravyriceandchips you should have tried eating out vegetarian in the 1980's🙄

I eat meat now, but didn't for around 20 years - many restaurants wouldn't have has a single vegetarian dish, let alone vegan.

I don’t understand paying for pasta in a restaurant anyway. A bag of pasta costs 40p, why would I pay £10 for pasta and sauce? I can do that at home.

Agreed. Also, at the cheap end of the eating out market, people will have the same worries about possibly wasting money on food that doesn't get eaten as people on a very tight budget when buying food to cook at home. It's all very well saying to try something new or just slightly different, but what if the fussy one in the family won't touch it and you end up having to find other food for them?

I also don't get what's so amazing about consistency of product - unless you have very particular dietary requirements, wouldn't it be a good thing if the same dish is slightly nuanced at different restaurants, albeit all of them done well by skilled chefs?

The general public don't think like that though. People who like Wagamama's Katsu chicken in one restaurant, really want it to be the same when they order it from a different Wagamama restaurant.

@PriamFarrl Yes! So true.
Seeimg veggie burgers everywhere. Had one in my gourmet country pub. To b fair it clearly stated it was a ( posh) vegan branded burger and said so on the menu.
Apparently that’s better than the chef knocking something up themselves. I’m not vegan or even veggie but even I have noticed so many burgers replacing the goats cheese and butternut.

Or

Cling & ding

@AnotherNameChangeYes

I don’t understand paying for pasta in a restaurant anyway.

I really fancied the pasta dish in one particular restaurant but I was gluten free. I rang ahead to arrange with them, sourced and took my own GF linguine, and the fuckers not only severely undercooked my pasta but they skimped on the sauce and didn't charge me any less for my dish: I paid £11 for a few cubes of butternut squash and a few leaves of sage!

Things I am paying for when I eat out:

1. Heat, light, decor
2. Staff to cook my meal, serve it to me, clear it away, do the washing up
3. Food and drink

Point 2 is worth quite a bit to me.

I know they don't have a choice 🙄 just wondered how much prep there would be...

Mussels if you're not in a seaside town are most likely Brakes' frozen bagged ones. There are a few meals which those of us who have worked in enough establishments recognise as from the brakes catalogue, and this is the one that sticks in my mind the most.

I still remember eating scampi at a fish & chip restaurant in WHITBY - you know, 'Whitby scampi' that you see and hear about everywhere? Nope, this scampi that that they served was from Iceland (the country).