Eating out is always an expensive let down.

[istheheatingonyet]

I'm just not doing it any more. Granted I am "older" but the last offering was bread, mashed acocado, feta and some sort of sauce. Is it a meal, is it brunch nobody knows?
Cheap ingredients, silly price.
What a waste of money.

there's a local cafe around here that does a really good avocado on toast, with egg that frankly, I could probably make it at home but the faff factor, ingredients etc, isn't worth it. So i think it does depend a bit.

Our one is really lovely bread, avocado, a perfectly poached egg, then it's topped with some mixed salad, tomatoes, and a little chilli and lime dressing which has the perfect amount of heat without being overwhelming. The balance of flavours and textures is really good and something I'd probably struggle with to get 100% right at home. It's totally worth the £10 I pay for it.

On the other hand, when I see places charging similar amonts for what is basically just a slice of toast with some scrambled egg and sliced avocado.... yeah, not so much!

I agree that a lot of meals out can be a let down. There are a couple of local independent cafes I like to go to though. The food and service are always good and prices are very reasonable.

I always think this! There is a really fancy place local we go on special occasions and don’t eat out any other time as it’s a let down!

I detest eating out, it’s expensive, never cooked the way I like and I end up with a bad back because the chairs are so uncomfy.
We last went out for lunch in December for DH birthday, £80 for 2 mains, 2 puds and 2 drinks. 😱
Ordinary pub in Cheshire.

A friend took me to a local curry restaurant on Monday. Jammed to the rafters at 6pm - thankfully we'd booked. I went with another friend to a Middle Eastern restaurant on Tuesday. Both meals were excellent.

That's terrible and depressing.The way you can buy the sam ething in Iceland.

I do feel for restaurant/ pub/ cafe owners as the cost of everything has gone up, but increase in costs to eat out in relation to our income is makes it not worth it anymore. It’s easily £100 for the 3 of us and I’d rather spend that on an experience that is not just an OK meal or an actual object we can keep. Luckily for us, DS (15) is an excellent cook and loves it so he makes us amazing meals at home (and I never have to cook! I do have to do the cleaning up though).

Avo toast is really a breakfast/lunch dish.. I'd be a bit surprised to see it at dinner!

It's not as simple as you say though.. one restaurant we love is The Coal Office at Kings Cross.. even if they had that on the menu, the other flavours they offer are exceptional and I would expect to pay more there than a basic avo/toast at a basic place.

I find restaurants are either consistently good or consistently bad.

Can’t knock this answer. Same for the Pizza Express club.

I know what I’m getting, yes. In both cases pretty boring, sub standard food.
I prefer a non-chain restaurant where the people running it actually care.

I'm told I'm a good cook but oh the joy of going out for a meal I haven't had to plan, shop for, prepare, cook, serve up and clean up afterwards. And if we have family or friends round there is the added stress of having everything ready at the right time and keeping it hot without drying out, etc, etc. Would much prefer to go out and concentrate on them and not what's going on in the kitchen.

Meal planning, shoping and cooking day after day after day is something I detest.

We are lucky to have several pubs locally that do really nice food at reasonable prices.

Our local Bar & Bistro roasts are so good. Definitely nothing frozen and everything just tastes amazing. You are obviously not dining out in the right places.

All homemade. It's small though so concentrate on quality rather than the quantity of diners.

We have tried quite a few places and none have been good.

A roast dinner has to be freshly cooked (not kept warm), dished up immediately and have home made roast potatoes and yorkshire puddings. If your place does that then that is great.

We will stick with making our own delicious roasts

Lucky you for having that choice. Sadly some people don't get the choice to frequent non-chain restaurants as there are none where they live.

I have a few independent cafés but all our restaurants are chains. We have a great independent pub in one of the villages nearby but it's not as easy to get to, you can't just hop on the bus to get to it. You have to drive.

Yes, they do. It's stunning. It's small and the chef is a really good one. We went to a larger local restaurant for our Christmas work meal. It was awful and you could tell the roast potatoes were frozen ones. There was just no taste to anything.

Well presumably it is if you pick a meal you don’t like as you appear to have done.
DH is an excellent cook so if we go for a meal we tend to be pretty conscious of where we’re going, and I don’t mean super expensive fancy food as I’m too fussy for that anyway.

That is good but sadly very unusual. We might actually eat out if more restaurants were like that

I prefer an independent to a chain as I think chains are as likely to be hit and miss as an independent. I've had good nandos, bad nandos and bloody awful nandos depending on location.
With independents you just need to do some research first, find out where is popular with the locals, has something been there a long time chances are then it's going to be good at what it does.
Eating out for me is a treat and often the reason of the outing rather than just eating because you are out over a mealtime. I think a lot of people who are eating out are just looking to fill a hole and food establishments have declined in quality over the years because they can get away with being subpar as long as they are not awful.

Another vote for good old 'spoons. I hope some folk who sneer or haven't tried it might patronise them more after reading this thread.

I am in love with their Sauv Blanc which helps, 😂but they provide meals that are worth the price. They're never going to be gourmet cuisine, and of course a lot of it is microwaved, but they're a fair price for what you get and it is is perfectly acceptable food, tastes good and there's a lot of healthy options as well as options for different diets and a lot of satisfying meals. They give decent service too IME.

The point is, you get what you pay for, which is more than can be said for a lot of places.

I eat out quite a lot. I go on minibreaks and meet my Mum for lunch a couple of times a month, go for pub meals with friends, go to the local fine dining places with family-and I am still voting spoons as top in value for money.

Second would be my local fine dining place-yes It's vastly more expensive than 'spoons but you are again, getting what you pay for, beautifully cooked food prepared from scratch and excellent service. Not somewhere I could afford to visit often and if I am honest I prefer casual dining, I am not a huge fan of people fussing over me and I like to be able to relax and stay as long as I want for a chat and some more drinks if we want, I am going out. But they're good, they care about the customer, it isn't a rip off.

Bottom is unfortunately local family ran places. Nothing wrong with them but they're just too expensive and not worth the money. E.G I don't eat meat-the only dish suitable for me at two local Italians is a version of pasta Neapolitan. Best part of £20 for a bowl of pasta with some (admittedly better than a jar) tomato sauce. I can go to spoons and get something far more interesting than that for half the price or I can pay a bit more and get something far better. A pasta dish like that is something I might make at home if I can't be bothered cooking or need to use ingredients up, it's not a meal I want while I am out.

Chains aren't much better. Went to Zizzi's recently, food was good but service was crap. At least in spoons you're not paying for a restaurant experience so you don't expect one!

Don't get me started on TGI Friday's! Went there recently (friend's choice). Fajita was about 99% onions. I spent a lot of time trying to pick bits out from a mass of them and when I'd finished there was basically a meal sized portion of onions left over. I don't want to spend my time doing that while I am out. Another time (partner's choice) recently we were seating on a teeeeny table, again I ordered fajitas and with my partner's plate and a couple of drinks it was difficult to not knock things off. It was also bloody freezing. Not a pleasnt dining experience and £££ for the portion size-fine to have smaller portions if the food is brilliant, but it wasn't. A VERY small glass of (likely very cheap crap) wine was more expensive than at the fine dining place mentioned above!! Just, WHAT?! I stuck to diet coke and I love my wine with a meal usually.

Tortillas so small you couldn't wrap the filling up properly or pick up your fajita without getting sauce on your hands and/or dropping food all down yourself.

Total rip off IMO.

The trouble with Waetherspoons (for me) is that it's run by Mr Brexit, so we avoid unless absolutley desperate.

Strongly disagree. The Zizzi I occasionally go to has delicious food, and I love their long thin pizzas. You can tell when the chefs know what they are doing and have passion in their job. I also enjoy dining out at an Indian restaraunt. It is very rare I have ever had a meal out and been disappointed/felt it was a waste of time.

He only owns 22% doesn't he?

Go to a Weatherspoons- the food is good although not sophisticated but you can get a decent meal and a drink for less than a tenner! No wonder they're always full. I feel that most restaurants these days are trying to squeeze every last penny from you. If they reduced their costs they'd make up the difference with more customers.

I like their pizzas too. Last time I went I asked for a certain drink, they said they'd ran out. Then I saw another table getting one!

I flagged someone else down and asked again and they got me one.
They brought the wrong starter out (they'd given ours to a different table who accepted it) we waited a stupidly long time for our main course.I asked for a glass of wine half way through the meal and I was still waiting for it when we'd finished and wanted to go so I told them not to bother in the end. They weren't busy at all. Just puts me off-makes me think they're all about justeat and ubereats and whatever now-I realise It's a chain restaurant but It's still a restaurant! Which implies some sort of service is to be expected, especially as It's not cheap-not expensive of course but not cheap.

The fact that yours is better is interesting however and means that if I am in a different town, I might give them another chance

We never eat out, literally never. I'm a keen cook and there are so many additives in 'bought' food I don't trust it. I want to know what we're eating and I'd be greeting all the way home if we were paying silly prices for something that could be twice as good and less than half the price if it were homemade.