Is £7.20 expensive

[BrownEyedGirl80]

For one portion of broccoli as part of a meal.
We are going to our towns well to do Chinese Restaurant tomorrow and thought I'd browse the menu online.Mains are around £13-£22,starters £8-£11.Aibu (or tight) to think vegetables as part of a meal shouldn't be so expensive? We are in the North if it's relevant.

Lighthearted.

I took my son to our local soft play today for the first time (his first time, not mine) and before COVID a cup of tea there would have set me back 80p. Today I paid £8 for a cup of tea, a cup of coffee (not a ‘fancy’ coffee) and one slice of toast.

I think the hospitality sector has a lot of bills to pay right now and have hiked their prices to help cover costs. I know not everyone can afford to pay those prices but if we want to keep these things afloat for the future then maybe we need to accept short term price hikes?

Down in London where I'm living at the moment it's the same for great restaurants if not much cheaper for good ones yes absolutely ridiculous

A properly post restaurant wouldn't do anything so crass as to use a pound sign. Or a decimal point in a price. Or a single word description on the menu. It would be something like:

sides
purple sprouting broccoli. almonds. micro herbs. 11

The elevated prices are part of what makes the experience special. If they can attract enough customers that the business thrives then they are not overpriced.

post=posh

Putting prices like that on menus is just a trendy fad.

Some higher end restaurants don't include any sides with the main, you have to order them separately.

For those prices I'd expect the cooking, ingredients, garnishing, sauces and presentation all to be pretty special as well as the atmosphere and service.

Otherwise, they're of the 'we're expensive so you think we're good, but we're actually no better than the normal price places' and therefore a bit of a ripoff.

I think the hospitality sector has a lot of bills to pay right now and have hiked their prices to help cover costs. I know not everyone can afford to pay those prices but if we want to keep these things afloat for the future then maybe we need to accept short term price hikes

But a lot of other people have suffered extra bills or reduced income over the last year and they can't pay higher prices or don't want to pay piss taking prices.

The prices in the OP could translate into well over £100 for a meal for two or £200 for a family and people will look at the overall cost and possibly decide that it's not how they want to spend their money.

You say it's a well to do restaurant OP - things will be more expensive across the board, no? I'd balk at paying £4.50 for a coffee in a soft play place, but £15 for a salad at Marcus Wareing where someone has artfully arranged the lettuce with tweezers... not generally my thing but I understand why it costs £15.

Your five a day is going to cost you £36!

We used to go to a great noodle restaurant ( not a chain) and they did tempura asparagus at £7.50 a pop as a starter.....and 80% of it was the stalks no tips ....I still bloody loved it though

Cook it yourself before you go and take it in some Tupperware. Cheeky beggars !

We had lunch in a restaurant in Chinatown in London the other day and a side order of greens was £12! But to be fair, it served three people easily, so you could say it was the equivalent of £4pp. I was still in shock at it, though.

Just checked menu for top end Chinese restaurant in York. Now £10 for vegetable sides but do come with sauce and large sharing plate.

I wouldn’t be shocked by that price as I have noticed over the years that vegetable dishes as quite expensive in Chinese restaurants. It seems normal.

Link would help
www.redchillirestaurant.co.uk/index/menu/menudetail.html?id=197

I would assume it is a mini-main dish rather than a plain side. When I’ve been to posh Chinese restaurants I have ordered broccoli (which comes with sauce, garlic, etc with lots of flavour) with a noodle dish as my main meal. I would consider £7 perfectly reasonable if the place was fancy (e.g., Royal China in London).

If it is a tiny portion (the four pieces mentioned in an earlier post), I’d be pretty vexed.

By Eck nottherenow that's a cracking looking menu. Pigs intestines AND chips!

Why is everyone comparing it to broccoli in the supermarket ? You're paying for someone to buy it, prep it, serve it to you, wash the pot used to prep it and the bowl and cutlery you used to eat it. Plus the rent on the property and all the other associated expenses such as electricity, water, heating.
You don't go to the hairdresser and expect them to only charge you the cost of the dye

And by "someone" what I mean is a cook, the pot washer, the waiting staff, the restaurant manager, the cleaner - all those people involved in the running of a restaurant.
If it was a French restaurant I don't think so many people would be outraged. But people seem to expect Chinese to be dirt cheap 🤷‍♀️

I've just looked at our well to do chinese restaurant in the north menu and their vegetable dishes are a similar price. Maybe its the same place!
It is lovely food, but we do baulk at the prices, perhaps because we are comparing them to takeout prices.

MindatWork but they’re veg dishes, it sounds like the OP is taking about a side dish?
We need a link to the menu, OP

Relatively plain vegetable dishes - large but not a “main dish” are always weirdly expensive in even moderately priced Chinese restaurants. I’m partial to a plate of garlic greens but I’m also a bit of a cheapskate so rarely order them for that reason.

But people seem to expect Chinese to be dirt cheap 🤷‍♀️
Tbh that was my first thought. If it were funky trendy Lebanese, it wouldn't get questioned as much imo. It's the habit of cheaper chippies.

@BarbaraofSeville

I think the hospitality sector has a lot of bills to pay right now and have hiked their prices to help cover costs. I know not everyone can afford to pay those prices but if we want to keep these things afloat for the future then maybe we need to accept short term price hikes

But a lot of other people have suffered extra bills or reduced income over the last year and they can't pay higher prices or don't want to pay piss taking prices.

The prices in the OP could translate into well over £100 for a meal for two or £200 for a family and people will look at the overall cost and possibly decide that it's not how they want to spend their money.

On on hand people want everyone to have a living wage and above, on another hand, god forbid the services actually cost enough to cover that...

Id go elsewhere on principle.

For contrast, I want with my friend to a lovely restaurant on Tuesday. The set menu was £22 a head for 3 courses and a complimentary pre starter. The service was superb and the pleace was fully booked. Generous servings of veg and 2 types of potatoes with main course.and they told us if we.wanted any more.of.those.to just ask. ( There was even broccoli!)