Sitara wrote:
>> If you thought you bagged a bargain by skipping the $29 burgundy-braised
>> short ribs and opting for the $18 baked ziti with mushrooms, marinara
>> sauce and chicken, you d be wrong. With food costs only accounting for
>> about 18 percent of the menu price, the pasta dish is where the
>> restaurant is making the most profit. Believe it or not, the beef is
>> actually the better deal, since it costs nearly half the menu price to
>> source and prepare it.
<snip>
> Being a restaurant owner and understanding food costs.....which this
> columnist doesn't...... it's a bit insulting to say that affordable dishes
> on menus are "ripping you off". Food costs for most restaurants is
> more in the 35% range. And in higher end restaurants food costs can be
> more than 50%.
>
> Restaurant owners do their best to keep pricing down and keeping quality
> up....at least independent restaurant owners do.
>
> If you want the chicken, get the chicken, the price reflects the food cost
> of the dish and it's not ripping you off. Yes chicken costs less, that is
> why it is a less expensive item on the menu.
In the particular example given, the rip-off is that the chicken dish is
probably at least 75% pasta. Pasta is cheap. Also, the fact that the dish is
easy to make means that a cook can whip it out without a great deal of
training or attention. I also think you were over-generalizing when you
wrote that the article made the claim that 'affordable dishes on menus are
"ripping you off."' I interpreted the article as saying that value is based
on ingredients, time, and effort, and a knowledgeable diner should compare
value (a calculated using those parameters) to price (on the menu) in
deciding what to order in a restaurant.
But OF COURSE, as you say, "If you want the chicken, get the chicken". Who
goes to a restaurant with the intention of ferreting out the dish with the
most "bang for the buck"? I certainly don't.
I think the most telling point in the article is one I've made often in this
forum:
>> If price alone isn t the best indicator of value on a menu, what criteria
>> should we use to ensure the most bang for our buck? Choose
>> labor-intensive, time-consuming, complex dishes, that call for
>> hard-to-find ingredients, suggests New York-based restaurant consultant,
>> Clark Wolf. If you can whip it up yourself in 20 minutes with stuff from
>> your kitchen cupboard do that, he says.
I hardly ever go to a restaurant and order something I'd make at home.
Tamales are a good example: I think they're usually more work than they're
worth, so I'm happy to buy them rather than make them. I *do* make tamales
every once in a while, but whenever I do it's never a run-of-the-mill
tamale; I make offbeat ones that don't ever appear in the market.
The recent thread entitled "Better at home? Better at restaurant?" was
intended to discuss some of the things which a diner would be better-advised
to make at home rather than buy in a restaurant because the QUALITY of the
home-cooked dish is better. The article posted here is more about food value
per dollar -- and I honestly think it's a rather strange approach to dining.
Bob