To think that restaurant food in Britain is fairly poor quality?

[partinor]

I live in a city that is supposed to have some of the best restaurants in Britain. I also am a good cook. Unless I spend £50 plus per meal, I usually end up eating a meal that is fine, but I could have easily made a meal as good or better myself fairly quickly.

Too many restaurants seem to basically buy in a combination of frozen ready made meals, and prop this up with fairly easy to make fresh food such as a fish cooked in a very easy to make sauce.

If I go out to eat I want something that is better than I can make fairly easily at home. I am beginning to think Britain must be a nation of poor cooks as I have been to so many places people rave about and I just think meh, that is fine, but no better than I made in 20 minutes after work last night.

I will carry on eating out with friends, just for the socialising.
Aibu.

Mowgli is good - I've only eaten at the one in Liverpool but liked it. I don't eat at other chains though usually, at least none that I can think of. Well, I might go to Pret or Paul if I'm travelling and want lunch in a hurry. Generally I prefer my own cooking because I know what I like and tailor the food I cook to suit my exact tastes which is something a restaurant is obviously not going to offer.

I like eating at the restaurants run by catering colleges as the food is usually good and cheap.

On the whole, I agree with you OP. There are notable exceptions though. There is a coffee shop near me that serves absolutely amazingly inventive dishes that I wouldn't even think of. You can have an amazing light lunch for about £7.

Years ago I was a waitress in a hotel where the chef hand made the sausages. I still remember one guest we had who insisted, repeatedly, that he could tell these were just cheap frozen supermarket sausages. He sneered at everything and pronounced a number of meals to be "microwaved ready meals" when they very definitely were not. You don't sound to be the nasty, spiteful sort he was, op, but as he was so very wrong about the origin of his food despite being sure he was right, there's a possibility you may be too.

I agree with you. So many times I eat out I feel I could do better at home

Not all restaurants. We avoid chains unless desperate. We're fortunate that within a 10-20 minute walk we have several amazing restaurants that serve excellent food. We've visited two of them today about hosting our wedding breakfast with them rather than going for one of these packages with a generic hotel that serves microwaved mass catering that is tasteless. We're very picky about where we eat, but independent places with small and seasonal menus are the best.

I live in London and there are plenty of fantastic restaurants for every budget. I look at reviews and time out etc for inspiration. We do occasionally treat ourselves and go somewhere 'fancy'.

When living in Leeds I found it very hard to eat out, everywhere was a chain or just a bit disappointing, except for Sunday lunch which many pubs did brilliantly.

I was in a place in Hertfordshire yesterday and the food was atrocious.
I would have rather had a Nando's

(I like Nando's though)

I'm really disappointed in eating out and have been disappointed so many times that on the odd occasion we want to go somewhere I don't actually look forward to it or we decide to just stay in instead.

A decent independent is worth its weight in gold.

Unfortunately he town I live in is full of chains that are just desperate for diners and don't have any idea on how to do a decent meal

UK food is mostly deep fried frozen shite. It’s lazy

Not all restaurants. We avoid chains unless desperate.

NARALT

I am in the sticks, so fine dining is a loooong drive away and an overnight stay.

However, i would say, go outside your comfort zone and try something new.
To my shame, we have lived here for fourteen years and never tried the local eatery. It was a pub when we first moved here, full of dodgy geezers sellings videos(!) Under the counter and fags for half price.
We saw that the exterior had changed donkeys years ago, but thought no more of it until people were drop jawed when we said we had not been.

It is now owned and run by three sisters. The food is absolutely sublime.

Daytimes they do pub type grub - but exceptionally well, at night time though, oh my God, the food is incredible.

We last went there between Christmas and New Year. For 6 of us, with 3 bottles of wine and a 3 course meal each, the bill was less that £250 - and this genuinely WAS fine dining.

I would never have gone through the door. Never. It really would have been my loss though!

I've actually found that the quality of food in the UK has increased quite a lot in recent years. Our local pubs have really upped their game in terms of quality and choice of food - particularly vegetarian options. Equally when we went to visit relatives and on holidays in UK , both in yorkshire and cornwall realised that we used to head to the posh restaurant, but then the food cost £££, and now we would actually prefer to eat at a gastropub so we can bring DS and sometimes DDog along and the food is just as nice and portions are much bigger.

I have a relative - who is lovely in all other ways- but hates eating out and insists that her home cooked meals are better than you'd get in a restaurant. They aren't. I'm not a great cook and find it hard to cook fish correctly so I enjoy having it when we go out. Last night in Edinburgh we had an excellent steak dinner - it wasn't cheap as celebrating DHs birthday so expensive wine and food choices- but it was much nicer than I could cook at home and just as importantly it was jolly and had ambience and we got dressed up.

Actually prefer UK to France where choices are not only restricted to the country but also to the local regional specialities and very poor vegetarian options.

A decent independent is worth its weight in gold.

Trouble is, you have no way of knowing until you eat there. I've been in a lot of independents and quite a few were very disappointing, with poor quality food, awful service and high prices. If you can get a recommendation, then that's wonderful, but randomly choosing an independent is a lottery.

I had a surprisingly nice mushroom risotto in 'Spoons, just saying ...

British food is crap in general.
Whenever I eat out in Europe the quality and standard of food is so much better.
They would refuse to eat most of the food we are served here.
In Italy I had the best pizza ever and in turkey everything tasted so fresh and so much choice.

I find that restaurants on the continent have very little variety and French restaurants particularly are shite. 90% have the same menu and very poor quality

Plus service in uk is crap miserable staff and food often comes out lukewarm and just edible at best.
Waiting staff hardly acknowledge you where in turkey they always pull out your seat for you polite etc a real dining experience.

My experience in turkey was revoltingly lecherous male waiters asking for a date , hated the place

I've found that since I got into cooking at home I've got v fussy. And since DH has got into eating what I've cooked him, so has he

Advice given above about family owned restaurants with good Tripadvisor reviews is pretty much what we do.

Last year we had a break in Leeds and ate amazing, and cheap food by avoiding all the chains in the centre - small Ethiopian place, Mexican place owned by the chef, we ate like kings and loved it.

Locally to us it we find we can predict what will be on the menus of all the gastropubs, they have all got the same interior designer (grey walls and mismatched chairs anyone?) and we'd rather stay at home or just have fish and chips.

I'm in a small town in the NE and I can walk to some wonderful restaurants. If I want to get in the car amazing food is within an hour's drive. I think this is fairly normal nowdays, some wonderful restaurants out there. Hungry now.

Have you tried Frustrated Chef in Chilwell?

Some days I'm pretty happy to go out for a meal that's no better than I can make at home, just because someone else has made it and someone else will wash up after it. It doesn't always have to be gourmet. I won't, however, go out for a meal that's worse than I can make at home, so I don't go to the really big chains.

I agree OK. When I lived in Spain you could get a great lunch menus for €8 that was freshly prepared with seasonal foods. Here I find that most places serve ready meals. It's a hard job to search for a good and reasonably priced meal. And then I find somewhere I think is not too bad and by the time I go back it's changed hands or it's the under chief and the meal is terrible.

OP YANBU. Food is very overpriced in the UK and quality is substandard compared to most of Europe, Asia and America. Sadly, this is only going to get worse with Brexit, as raw ingredients are going to go up, small businesses will suffer, and kitchen and wait staff (huge numbers of whom come from the EU) will be denied work visas.

—Every thread is a brexit thread—

Do you know if Impasto is any good OP?