I'm in-between two minds. On one end £9 of labour cost for a plate of asparagus seems deeply inefficient and unrealistic, particularly when the cost of ingredients that also include (hard) labour is £2. On the other, just a century ago being served quality food in a nicely decorated place was exclusively the privilege of aristocrats.
> On one end £9 of labour cost for a plate of asparagus seems deeply inefficient and unrealistic, particularly when the cost of ingredients that also include (hard) labour is £2.
Presumably the staffing cost is the front of house staff as well as the actual cooking and then the cost of employing someone to wash dishes, clean the restraunt and so on. Then compared to growing asparagus which seems to largely come from countries with substantially lower wages. Restraunts have always been infamously low margin businesses though.
> chop off their woody ends to lacto-ferment, so we can use them elsewhere
Then you cant even say it costs 1.60 in ingredients per plate. It might even be that it costs 72 cents and that the customer gets only 60 cents worth of vegetables.
> asparagus can actually be more expensive than some proteins
It's not actually the asparagus but the preparation that costs money.
> Overall, the ingredients for this dish are around £3, but the labour, energy and everything else comes to £56
Say 60 which is 100 times 60 cents or 3-4 kg.
The hidden cost is real estate for both the restaurant and the employees. They have few seats and the usual menu has a lot of different things.
If say the city would buy the surrounding buildings (which is a good investment) and provided say 2000 to 7000 seats for free (we've already paid taxes) then reduce the menu to 3-4 meals that you pick up yourself at the counter people could eat there for next to nothing (which would be good for the economy)
As a broke PhD student, my conclusion was that I just need to cook more. As pointed out in the article, the ingredients cost a small fraction of the price of the dish. Yes, its a bit time consuming but its also interesting to make different dishes, and many things like lasagna or biriyani can be batch cooked. There's a lot of really interesting dishes that don't take a whole lot of time per portion.
Lately I’ve been finding most restaurant dishes “low quality”: in particular, less meat and tastes overcooked compared to what I make at home, though grains and vegetables are also blander.
I suspect this is more me being a harsher critic than restaurants enshittifying. I’ve been improving my cooking. I do get premium ingredients, that sometimes cost much more than the cheapest alternative, but still always much less than even low-end restaurants.
So my conclusion is, if you like good food you should cook yourself. Maybe if you’re rich enough to always eat at especially expensive restaurants, but even then I think you’d prefer a private chef.
Restaurants are enshittifying, in the US this is largely the Sysco effect where more dishes come pre-prepared to the restaurant from mass production lines. They range from bad to peak mediocrity.
If you like food you should do both! There are plenty of things it's hard to cook at home or impractical to keep all the different things you need. A good example is ironically a really simple food. Pizza needs temperatures most domestic ovens aren't nearly hot enough to provide in order to make a quality result.
Restaurants also provide an opportunity to eat foods you've never experienced before which really helps cooking similar things at home as you have some idea of what the end result should be like. And the beauty is that this often doesn't have to be expensive to be good.
It's like any creative hobby you need to develop both craft and taste.
my theory is that restaurants used to just close when the owner / chef / patrons ran out of steam to keep an excellent place afloat
it seems to be more popular now to buy a struggling business that seemed highend, give it a new coat of paint, swap the menu for something from a university cafeteria, and keep it making money for a couple decades
I'm in-between two minds. On one end £9 of labour cost for a plate of asparagus seems deeply inefficient and unrealistic, particularly when the cost of ingredients that also include (hard) labour is £2. On the other, just a century ago being served quality food in a nicely decorated place was exclusively the privilege of aristocrats.
> On one end £9 of labour cost for a plate of asparagus seems deeply inefficient and unrealistic, particularly when the cost of ingredients that also include (hard) labour is £2.
Presumably the staffing cost is the front of house staff as well as the actual cooking and then the cost of employing someone to wash dishes, clean the restraunt and so on. Then compared to growing asparagus which seems to largely come from countries with substantially lower wages. Restraunts have always been infamously low margin businesses though.
I see some interviews where asparagus farmers explained that the market forces them to sell at a loss. It is apparently an uniquely complicated crop.
They talk about price per kg but I see 4 on the plate? 12 to 20 gram each. 48 to 80 grams total. 21 to 12.5 portions in a kg. £15 to £20 per 1000g
> chop off their woody ends to lacto-ferment, so we can use them elsewhereThen you cant even say it costs 1.60 in ingredients per plate. It might even be that it costs 72 cents and that the customer gets only 60 cents worth of vegetables.
> asparagus can actually be more expensive than some proteins
It's not actually the asparagus but the preparation that costs money.
> Overall, the ingredients for this dish are around £3, but the labour, energy and everything else comes to £56
Say 60 which is 100 times 60 cents or 3-4 kg.
The hidden cost is real estate for both the restaurant and the employees. They have few seats and the usual menu has a lot of different things.
If say the city would buy the surrounding buildings (which is a good investment) and provided say 2000 to 7000 seats for free (we've already paid taxes) then reduce the menu to 3-4 meals that you pick up yourself at the counter people could eat there for next to nothing (which would be good for the economy)
It wouldn't be the same experience of course.
A century ago was 1926.
As a broke PhD student, my conclusion was that I just need to cook more. As pointed out in the article, the ingredients cost a small fraction of the price of the dish. Yes, its a bit time consuming but its also interesting to make different dishes, and many things like lasagna or biriyani can be batch cooked. There's a lot of really interesting dishes that don't take a whole lot of time per portion.
I would argue that if building one thing is cheaper per unit than building 100 there is something fishy going on. You aren't even good at cooking!
Lately I’ve been finding most restaurant dishes “low quality”: in particular, less meat and tastes overcooked compared to what I make at home, though grains and vegetables are also blander.
I suspect this is more me being a harsher critic than restaurants enshittifying. I’ve been improving my cooking. I do get premium ingredients, that sometimes cost much more than the cheapest alternative, but still always much less than even low-end restaurants.
So my conclusion is, if you like good food you should cook yourself. Maybe if you’re rich enough to always eat at especially expensive restaurants, but even then I think you’d prefer a private chef.
Restaurants are enshittifying, in the US this is largely the Sysco effect where more dishes come pre-prepared to the restaurant from mass production lines. They range from bad to peak mediocrity.
> I’ve been finding most restaurant dishes “low quality”
Many restaurants use pre-made components like sauces bought from restaurant wholesalers which explains a lot of the sameness across establishments.
Hollandaise from a bag? No thanks.
If you like food you should do both! There are plenty of things it's hard to cook at home or impractical to keep all the different things you need. A good example is ironically a really simple food. Pizza needs temperatures most domestic ovens aren't nearly hot enough to provide in order to make a quality result.
Restaurants also provide an opportunity to eat foods you've never experienced before which really helps cooking similar things at home as you have some idea of what the end result should be like. And the beauty is that this often doesn't have to be expensive to be good.
It's like any creative hobby you need to develop both craft and taste.
my theory is that restaurants used to just close when the owner / chef / patrons ran out of steam to keep an excellent place afloat
it seems to be more popular now to buy a struggling business that seemed highend, give it a new coat of paint, swap the menu for something from a university cafeteria, and keep it making money for a couple decades
because that was the point... i guess...
The point is to get nutrients into the labor force.
dishes and costs in asia and different venues would be solid here