To Wonder When Starters Got So Expensive

[AnotherBoringSaturday]

DP & I went out for dinner last night to one of local pubs.
It is a lovely country pub.
Starters were £8.50 + !!
I just had a main (£22.50) but DP has a starter as well. It was a piece of mackerel the size of my thumb (literally 2 mouthfuls) for £8.50
We did mention it to the waitress & they sent us another piece but I’m just shocked at how expensive it was.
Don’t even get me started at the price of pudding

And the "Boomer stole our future" comment is ridiculous. The average 60 year old has no influence on the economy, they are just living their life like everyone else. It is the greedy ruling classes who fucked things up for everyone.

“Because a chain pub includes a drink and 2 side dishes in a fixed price menu, they feel resentful at being asked to pay extra for side dishes.”

I get what you mean but even as a chef I get pissed off with places that sell a steak and then you have to pay extra from potatoes, veg, sauce etc. Who wants just a steak on a plate? A main meal should include a choice of potato and some veg.

You know not everyone in the 'boomer' age range owns their own home, has a mahoosive pension and swans about like they're in a SixT advert right?

Quite right @TinklyLittleLaugh

"They sound more like restaurant prices than pubs IMO."

I'm guessing OP went to a place that is effectively a restaurant though.

Someone mentioned fine dining - I don't really know what counts as fine dining? Given that £22 for a main is the max I'd be paying for a very special occasion - which I felt obliged to attend lol - I'm wondering how it's categorised and what you'd expect to pay for fine dining. Someone upthread said the Ivy would be a similar price - I've always just assumed it would be much more expensive?

Crispbutty "I get what you mean but even as a chef I get pissed off with places that sell a steak and then you have to pay extra from potatoes, veg, sauce etc. Who wants just a steak on a plate? A main meal should include a choice of potato and some veg."

is that a choice thing though? So instead of saying steak with xx veg, they just price separately and then customer chooses veg?

Yes but they get away with charging silly amounts then. So you order a fillet steak at say £25 which is a reasonable price I would say. But you want chips (add £3.50) peas (add £2.50) mushrooms (add another £2.50) and by the time you have a nice steak meal your dish has bumped up to nearly £40... you are probably getting more veg than you eat so it gets wasted too as you are paying for side dishes. It’s a way to overcharge customers and it’s wrong in my opinion.

Sides are becoming expensive too if they don’t come with the main.
It’s all quite depressing really.

I almost never eat out.

I know they have overheads. But its rarely for the cooking, just sitting down somewhere. The foods usually frozen, mass produced stuff I could buy for £1.99 at Tescos, M&S etc. Even if its "home cooked" you can tell they are cutting corners at every opportunity, tiny bits of poor quality meat etc etc.

A. Con.

Prices at The Ivy - mains mostly around the twenty-something quid mark with a few outliers a bit more or a bit less.

As PP have observed, however, the greater concentration of restaurants and consequent competition mean that eating out in London is often better value than in other parts of the country. I'd consider the Ivy to be smart but not really 'fine dining' - that to me would be somewhere like Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester or Hélène Darroze at the Connaught.

M&S at home. All the way

But its sad not to eat out anymore too....

re. what Annie said, to me the only really worthwhile experience of eating out is "gourmet" which can be expensive, but at least its not readymeals-in-all-but-name

I love eating out but it's just so disproportionately expensive to my weekly food bill, I always think 'I could have make 'x' meals for that!

If thats all the ivys menu not much there if your vegetarian lol

Alonso

I totally disagree with you. No way a vegetarian meal should cost the same as a piece of fish or steak and I don't think that vegetables are time consuming to prep.

There's a separate vegetarian menu, issey. It's a lot shorter, however, and several of the items are sized-up versions of the starters from the main menu.

^ depends if its a decent or interesting vegetarian dish to some extent. But high quality meat you will pay extra for generally anyway. Most of the meat most restaurants use - factory chicken in miniscule proportions, cheap mince etc. won't cost much.

IMO, I hasten to add!

I think the issue is that whilst prices have been rising year on year, salaries have not

Whoever said this, spot on. My salary hasn't risen by more than 1% for years and years, and prices of everything else are sky high. Of course that's why pub meals are expensive- they also have to pay higher electricity, water, gas, wages and so on.

I would balk at paying more than £50 for two people for a pub but I realise that's still not a slap up meal by anyone's standards. Even if you go to a cheapish chain, a main might be £8, but a starter £5/6, drinks pricey and dessert prices leaped up a few years from £3/4 to £6/7 for a really standard pudding.

I am finding eating out with the family absolutely extortionate and certainly couldn't afford a naice posh pub for 4 at the moment. We really hardly do eat out like that and if we do, I tend to suggest ice creams on the way home rather than fork out another £20 on desserts.

It's a shame as I did love eating out a lot and did it all through my twenties/early thirties, but my wages vs cost of eating out just don't balance out any more, plus of course it's double with older children.

£22 for a main of cod!

Me and DH rarely eat out. There is no way we are paying silly money for food we can cook as well if not better.

When we do eat out it's nearly always Indian food. We can make curry as well as the restaurants (and our onion bhajis are not greasy like so many restaurants are) but without a tandoor oven it is impossible to make decent naan bread. We can make lovely parathas, puris and chapatis though.

yes alot of restaurant food is really not that nice mydog, i'm not a "chef" but could do better! even curries as you say often unnecessarily greasy. but i do struggle there, sadly with getting the spices right an' all.

I particularly like Thai food. But last time, though taste good, the amount of meat was so tiny it was ridiculous! The alcohol was incredibly expensive. We ended up paying over £120 for very average meal for 3, a few glasses of wine, poor service, and that was all! I really must learn to cook "Thai".

We've stopped eating out so much. We ised to eat out twice every weekend before kids. I got fed up of paying £50-£60 for essentially fairly mediocre meals. If we go out now, we may pay up to £100+ but will go somewhere special and that will be every quarter. Otherwise in London there are some great ethnic restaurants that offer food very cheaply.

my impression, nowadays, is that its always a "business", first and foremost.

I am an avid fan of reading trip advisor and researching before going out to eat these days.

When I go out I want a good atmosphere and food that I wouldn’t cook myself or haven’t tried before.

Having worked in numerous restaurants and pubs I know many of the shortcuts they use, I know many that try to pass off frozen defrosted deserts as homemade (most places).

I don’t mind Wetherspoons as it’s cheap and cheerful. You know what to expect and they do the best buffalo wings (I love them!) but I know it’s all pre-cooked, microwaves, and bought in.

If I want good home cooked food I look for pubs or restaurants that use local produce and butchers. (Living in Devon I’m very fortunate that we have some good places to choose from).

i had a readymade curry at weatherspoons, surprising tasty too! and no pretence! though they did get into trouble recently with their rotting meat .