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.

I know people who work in Wetherspoons kitchens and it's a hybrid. Some stuff (burgers, mixed grills, breakfasts) are cooked fresh. Other stuff is pre made and heated up. Nothing tinned though.

I'm naive too.

I thought large pub chains mixed it up eg some stuff cooked and some brought in. I assumed stuff brought in would be from their central place that they cooked /.made it in.
Not somewhere like brakes!

Also all this boil in the bags....are the bag's pb free??

I was shocked when I saw restaurant in Venice do this and it's rare to find fresh cooking now.

Oh well.

I've worked in loads of pubs and restaurants in Ireland and Australia while i was in university and backpacking and have never come across this. And I've worked in fancy places and pub grub type places too.

See also Morrisons omelettes...but I could have a fried egg.
(admittedly I haven't eaten out for about 6 or 7 yrs)

You're a fucking supermarket.

You sell eggs.

How fucking hard is it to make an omelette??

I rarely eat out in personal life (mostly work) but when I do, I go to the local family owned independent place. I've lived here far too long so I know them.

the food was cooked on site but now a larger section of the menu is microwaved. They do separate sauces so you could choose a different pasta but things like chicken are ready to reheat and have the sauce poured over.

we were a bit thrown the first time it happened because it normally takes a while for food to be cooked.

they said it was the only way to turn a profit in lockdown. They started on JustEat etc during that time. They used to host live jazz but no longer.

prices are the same. i'm not much of a one for eating out so not hugely fussed but my sister is quite pissed off. However, I think prices would need to double and there's no staff so...that's that.

I'm sorry you find it weird. I try to support independent businesses wherever possible where I believe this is less common, so it's not something I'd ever really had to give much thought to. If we are shopping and stop at Pizza Express for example, then they do appear to be cooking the food in front of you.

But apologies for my ignorance anyway.

You can buy Cote at Home now and it's the same menu as the restaurants. Also Dishpatch do restaurant to home food, lots of sous vide stuff that you heat in the bag or throw in the oven. It's nicer than a ready meal (well Dishpatch usually is) but it makes you realise what a lot of restaurant cooking probably is.

Someone has still cooked the Dishpatch stuff from fresh, it's just batch cooked and stored.

Requires a person to stand and cook it a pan and a pan to clean up, it ends up cheaper and easier to just microwave it

Look at the menus. If the menus have LOTS of options and don't change often (a la Wetherspoons, the Ivy), you're almost certainly looking at a place that buys in it's food ready-prepared and re-heats.

If the menu is small and / or changes seasonally, it's probably cooked fresh.

Wow 16 beeping microwaves!

I guess I'll be looking at cook instead!

I was quite shocked when I was watching the Gordon Ramsay US restaurant series that so many restaurant do this.
So no wonder if it happened in UK too. But surely you would know, and won't go there again?

When we moved to France I was really pleased to think we would be eating in fantastic restaurants, that cook from scratch, great produce etc. By the time we left, eight years ago, restaurants were required to put a sign in their window stating they cooked from scratch if indeed they did, because the vast majority put plates in the microwave. One town we lived in, near the Spanish border, Argeles sur mer, had a line of restaurants along the port. We ate in most of the restaurants and cafe's over time, soup would come up with cool areas and a skin on top, clearly out of the microwave, ditto some dishes would be burning hot but some bits of food were cool, others dried out. Have never been so disappointed.

Can you imagine the waiting time if everything was cooked from scratch!

I think restaurants should be required to be transparent about whether food is cooked on site or not etc.

I know Wetherspoons serve microwaved meals so I don't know why this confused me so much but the other day they said to someone on the table next to us "we're out of poached eggs for your eggs Benedict but we can do fried"

And I thought, both are just eggs. If you don't have one to poach how do you have one to fry 😂

My sister worked in an Ibis and said their scrambled eggs came in vacuum packed bags and advised never to eat a 'cooked' breakfast.

What's the point in having chefs if it's a case of sticking things in a microwave?

Because despite what it may say on the restaurant's blurb, many aren't so much chefs as minimum wage food prep staff with a fancy title

That said, microwaved food doesn't have to mean lower quality. I know a number of lovely small independent places where the food's made with the greatest care, but frozen and microwaved later precisely so they can offer more options on any given day

20+ years ago it was pretty normal, in a smart place, to be waiting 45 mins for food.

Yes of course they do.

I used to work in one when I was a student, decades ago.

Then, it was frozen meals in bags that were heated up in /on a conventional oven or hob.

The only truly fresh food was steaks.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with precooked and reheated food per se. As long as the food is well cooked in the first place and stands up to storage then I don’t see the problem. There’s an upmarket small chain of restaurants near me and they’re quite open about having a central kitchen where sauces etc are made for all the sites.

Um, this means they are making them fresh though? Previously frozen fresh pizza toppings are fine and then it’s being fired in an oven that you can see. It’s really not the same as a ping meal in a chain pub!

@walnutmarzipan - the Ivy chain don’t use microwaved pre made meals.

The dough being frozen in Pizza Express is common sense surely? No way could their restaurants make enough dough to keep up with their table turnover otherwise. I'm sure the little independent pizza place near me that make their own dough probably batch cook it and freeze it.

Tell me about it, Solonge ... I remember Argeles sur Mer only too well!!

On the other hand there was a place in Thuir, just down from Perpignan, where every last thing at lunch was made from scratch ... even the butter.
That meal cost me 18 Euros and it's still the best I've ever had in France (and that includes some very pricy places)

Erm, well of course it would be...because if you bought from M&S it would be a ready meal too?!