Is this portion too small (pic)??? Should I complain?

[TeachyTeacher]

OK, a little 1st world problem-ish but we're really trying to budget and eat out rarely, as a treat. Went out over the weekend and ordered this pasta dish from a well known chain restaurant, costs around £15. Is it just me who thinks it's a kiddy portion? I took it up with the waitress who said it's the portion size and thats that... should I email a complaint?

Haveatakeaway - Now you see I would use that because spaghetti portions are hard to guess, I either do too much or not enough, and can't be bothered getting the scales out to weigh it.

We took the children out to lunch at our local Italian restaurant at the weekend. 3 child portions pasta , 2 adult main course pastas, 3 small ice creams, 3 soft drinks, 2 beers, 2 coffees came to just over £100. I was shocked.

@WonderfulYou

Surely they’ll say you should have said something at the time though or even the next day.

I think you have left it too late.

I would put a photo on trip advisor though and give an honest review about how small it was for the money.

I think a complaint was made at the time.

Was it a chef and brewer pub because we always find their meals to be minute.

Kids pasta £5 was 2 mouthfuls literally and came on a saucer.
My children were 4 and 6 at the time and if our portions had been sufficient we would have ordered an adult portion but it is the first time that after eating out we had to go home and cook another meal.

I have often found ordering a pasta dish in an Italian restaurant a very disappointing experience. I usually go for a pizza, although the base tends to be very thin , it's much more filling

The OP said chain Italian. I've seen on other threads people complaining about small portions at Frankie and Bennys and either Zizzi or Bella Italia so it was probably one of those.

Maybe they serve less because they want you to order starters and sides too?

I think lots of people over plate at home and have lost sight of what a normal portion size is , I eat at a fair amount of chain type restaurants as my daughter is gf so we need to know there is something she will eat and I’ve never had an issue with portion size .

WE have stopped going to restaurants on a regular basis unless going reasonably high end for a birthday/anniversary kind of thing- I agree pasta dishes are always teeny. I’ve found the Ivy chain to be very decent portions (and not much more cash than some of the bigger chains) same with Bills- portion sizes are usually good.

They only have to put calories on if the company employ 250 or more people

What gets me is that so many restaurants are going the veggie / vegan route and charging the same amount for something like a mushroom wellington and a beef wellington! Some veggie dishes look lovely but i'm not paying £15 for some mushroom and pastry!

I bought a spaghetti measuring thing (basically a disc with holes in of different sizes to fit the spaghetti into), the portion for 1 was absolutely tiny and I rarely ate carbs so thought I had tiny amounts when I cooked a spaghetti Bol, but actually what I had was more like double portion, and the portions my friends would have would be more like 4-6 portions 😬😂 so I stopped using it.

I'd never eat pasta in a restaurant - it's a complete rip off, and can easily be made at home so seems a bit 'mundane'.

£15 is excessive - chain restaurants make their money on dishes like this.

You're talking 75p for the pasta, £1.50 tops for a piece of chicken and 25p for a blob of pesto. On this estimation of £2.50 cost, £15 charge that's 500% markup. If they sell a few of those dishes in an evening, they're laughing all the way to the bank!

@SoManyTshirts

I wonder if portions have got smaller to stop the calorie counts on the menus appearing excessive.

Based on recent experience I’d expect a restaurant pasta dish to be twice the size of a ready meal.

That's such a good point! Oh god it's awful!

Portion size aside, I don't get the moaning about the money. Yes you can cook it cheaper at home, but you are also paying someone to cook it, serve it, clear your table wash up, giving you a few free hours to relax and enjoy company.

That's strange but YANBU to complain if it was tiny as £15 is a lot for a pasta dish. We've had a chicken pasta pesto dish at Pizza Express recently and it was really big and filling with loads of pieces of chicken and it had a cheese sauce in it as well so maybe go there next time :).

@TeachyTeacher

So sorry guys!!! It just won't bloody post the pic!!! anyway it was honestly about a small cereal bowls worth of pasta and one piece of chicken! It was a chicken pesto dish! Does anyone else think the restaurants will start to shrink portions but not prices given the energy hike, their bills must be soaring too it's a terrible vicious circle (where my belly lost out!!!)

Absolutely. Most of the chains have being doing this recently. Wagamama even reduced the size of their portion of rice. It's not like they would even be saving a lot of money there!

I know that their costs will also have risen but customers are also strapped for cash and may be out on a special annual visit. It is really unfair on those customers who may remember it being a certain way and are presented with a starter portion at full price (and some more as they have already added on a few £s compared to last years prices). I also noticed that people have voted with their feet and many of the places that had queues outside the door in 2019 are permanently nearly empty. However, there are a few chains who have not resorted to this and they are still as busy as before.

IT'S MASSIVE!!/THAT'S TINY!

To me eating out is about the experience and the fact that I don’t have to cook.
My mother would tell me that it wasn’t worth eating out as she could produce the same meal for a fraction of the cost. (She couldn’t)
She couldn’t see it as an experience but more about the cost of the ingredients.

I go to an independent Italian restaurant near to me. It doesn’t skimp on pasta (I don’t really like pizza). I usually go for a late lunch which means I don’t eat in the morning and am full for the rest of the day.

If a dish is 1500 calories but it is the only thing you eat that day then to me that isn’t a great deal of calories

Trying to reduce the portions sizes to get to the calories needed if you have had breakfast and dinner doesn’t work. You would end up with a tiny portion.
it isn’t the food that costs the money in restaurants it is the rent, rates, staff, water, gas and electricity
Ingredients are a very minor part of the cost.

@DarkCorner

That's strange but YANBU to complain if it was tiny as £15 is a lot for a pasta dish. We've had a chicken pasta pesto dish at Pizza Express recently and it was really big and filling with loads of pieces of chicken and it had a cheese sauce in it as well so maybe go there next time :).

I've had that at my local Pizza Express pre-pandemic and it was a rip off. I found all of their pasta dishes to be similar. It must depend on the branch.

@daisychain01

I'd never eat pasta in a restaurant - it's a complete rip off, and can easily be made at home so seems a bit 'mundane'.

£15 is excessive - chain restaurants make their money on dishes like this.

You're talking 75p for the pasta, £1.50 tops for a piece of chicken and 25p for a blob of pesto. On this estimation of £2.50 cost, £15 charge that's 500% markup. If they sell a few of those dishes in an evening, they're laughing all the way to the bank!

You've forgotten to include business rates, chef salary, waiting staff salary, fuel bills, water bills, depreciation on machinery/equipment/crockery/cutlery etc

Prezzo pasta portions are generous (or certainly were before the Kcals started appearing on the menu). I do wonder whether that is going to be used as an excuse to cut their own costs in the future.

I find Italian meals always poor value for money.
Most dishes- pasta or pizza, garlic bread etc are simply white flour.
I understand most of the cost is in overheads, staff etc, but if I eat out I want to get some decent food for my money, not just a plate of pasta.
Chain Italian restaurants are particulary poor vale.

I'm in another country. Went out for Easter Sunday meal this weekend with some friends. We went to a restaurant we've been to a few times, through not for a year or so.
The prices had gone right up and the portion size right down.
Admittedly their portion sizes were probably too big for the average diner before but the prices were extortionate.
I get what people are saying about the costs of staffing and so on and so forth and that you are not just paying for the ingredients so the fact you can by a kg bag of pasta in the supermarket for a euro is irrelevant.
However, if restaurants are going to put their prices up that much and reduce the portion size, many people are going to say "Nope, not worth it any more". There comes a tipping point where you feel ripped off. Some people would pay 15 quid for a small pasta dish and not feel ripped off but might start to feel ripped off when it approaches 22 quid. And some people would feel ripped off if it cost "only" 8 pounds.

Interestingly the restaurant we went to is normally rammed on Easter Sunday. It was a third full if that. So either people feel that the prices are too high for what you get in return even though it's a lovely ambience and really nice service personnel or people just can't afford it at all anymore due to inflation.

I think we'll be seeing many restaurants going out of business as more people start to be unable to afford the increasing prices.

I go to a restaurant because I don’t want to cook that day. I don’t expect to be served a dish that costs the same as before but has so few calories that it is relying on me having to cook breakfast and dinner as well. It doesn’t become viable.

@sweeneytoddsrazor

Portion size aside, I don't get the moaning about the money. Yes you can cook it cheaper at home, but you are also paying someone to cook it, serve it, clear your table wash up, giving you a few free hours to relax and enjoy company.

True, but looking at it from the consumer's standpoint, the whole point of the show is that they do not want to feel short changed compared to before so it is a fine balancing act. I honestly believe that half our restaurants will disappear by the time we are done with this bout of austerity so maybe they are getting whatever they can out of customers right now before the axe falls.

Ask Italian and Bella Italia both have small portion sizes so you feel like you need dessert

Yes, eating out is an experience, but there's plenty of places that will produce something that's significantly better than pesto pasta, which doesn't really count as cooking, more what you throw together at home when you don't have time or CBA cooking and can't afford to eat out or order a takeaway.