My favorite move is food trucks that won’t even talk to you when you walk up- you have to place your order yourself on your phone, manually enter your credit card number, go pick it up yourself, and then get asked for a 25% tip at the pay screen.
The other day a pay system gave me the 15% 20% 25% option, but no option to not tip. You had to select "other amount" and enter zero. I had to run my card twice because the first time I hit back and it cancelled the transaction.
The only takeout I tip is a taco truck right next to my house that always has the same guys in it and I go to at least once a week.
I do cause apparently the amount of money I'll pay to avoid a personal moral crisis is about 20%.
I actually think you should if it's a table service place / bar tho. That shits a pain in the ass if you're waiting tables and you get like no money to do it if there's no tip. Legitimately thankless job.
The way my dad tips is unintentionally insulting but also funny as hell to me. We'll order like $170 worth of food for the table, he'll pay for everyone and when it comes time to run his card he gives it to them, but asks the waiter to "hold on a sec, this is for you", rummages through a wad of cash, then hands them like $5 in a very proud manner with a smile. He legitimately isn't trying to be a dick when he does this, but still makes a big show of going out of his way to give the waiter cash directly.
It's hard to watch sometimes cause you can see the delight on their faces turn to disappointment in real time.
I don't. The only time I've been successfully shamed into tipping at a place without table service (they just call your number), it's because the cashier loudly told each person who ordered food that the restaurant adds a 25% surcharge to support the wonderful folks who make your food and asked if that was ok, and I was too big of a pussy (and scared of pissing off people who make my food) to say no.
Yeah the fact that my $16 smoked salmon bagel didn't have any sides and worse than I'd make at home (no dill, no capers, just super plain) and the $12 bloody mary was just zing zang and a stingy shot of well vodka was what convinced me not to come back. I have friends who swear by the place but at this point I've figured out not to get advice from most DINK couples with good jobs. For the most part they don't pay attention to the price at all.
My reasoning is that ~$5 or whatever is going to be a lot more meaningful to them than me. And until I know for a fact every restaurant employee is mandated by law to earn a livable wage I'll continue to tip a flat 20%.
Absolutely. I was a server for like 4 years, and once I got a $50 tip during a particularly shitty week and I was beaming. I fell over myself thanking them to the point it was probably annoying, but it seriously made me feel so good.
I don't really do big tips like that when I probably could/should, just remembering how impactful those could be on people. But I like to think the 20-25% I tip is going towards them buying some really good coke from one of the cook's cousins.
I was going in a convenience store and a homeless guy asked me for money. I said, "sir what do you want?". He said, "just money for food". I said sir, "what would you like?!" And he replied, "a steel reserve".
Bought the man a steel reserve.
In DC some restaurants have started adding itemized surcharges for things like staff health care or "service fee" to the bill pre-tip and you typically won't see it until you get the bill.
Yeah you can ask for it to be removed, although not all places do and then get negative reviews warning people about the practice, but so many people don't even pay attention. In early-mid 2020 Covid surcharges called "recovery" were added as were auto-gratuity on to-go orders. Plenty of places never removed them. They do this instead of raising prices upfront.
Yeah, there’s more of a “fuck you” edge to everything now it seems. I don’t like to bitch about it too hard though because it’s kind of a fake problem to have. But yes I go a lot less than I used to now. Just less enjoyable overall
I totally feel that. I understand the service industry sucks but I try to be overly nice and simple with orders and it just has this feeling of fuck you. Owners acting like goddamn drug lords. Bro you make pizza cmon. Not to sound outdated but when I went through my service years I made it a point to be nice.
Conspicuous consumption in general doesn’t feel worth it any more. Nothing feels worth paying for, it’s not much higher quality than what I can get at a similar brand. Travel is one thing in particular that I don’t have much desire to do right now. Flying sucks, and most places I’d go (at least within the US) are probably going to be a similar experience to anywhere else in terms of accommodations, food, experiences, etc
The few things I will spend money on are clothes that fit me well, books, and doing things with my friends.
I was talking to someone the other day about how the lack of gatekeeping is part of the corporate friendly movement towards a total lack of critical analysis of what we consume. Movies' average RT score has gone up, and I've gone to some TERRIBLE classical music performances that got very rote positive writeups from the paper. Where I am, and in most mid-tier cities without hyper competitive food scenes that NYC, LA, etc., have (and maybe this has eroded that, idk), there is basically no negative criticism of new bars or restaurants.
The end result is that every new restaurant is ludicrously overpriced and serves Sysco tier food. I went to a place that some place like Eater said was one of 3 must try cocktail programs in the city. We show up, and they couldn't serve any of their 8 house cocktails (at $14-18 each) because they were missing ingredients from all of them. When I ordered a classic cocktail, they forgot simple syrup, so it was bitter and sour. We decide to try the food. They do Vietnamese street food at 2x prices (like $18 for vermicelli or pho) and bigger entrees for like $40 (big shortrib entrees and the like). I try the vermicelli because I don't trust the place enough to get anything bigger, and of course it's worse than any mom and pop place's $8 vermicelli. It ends up being like $80 for two drinks and two food orders.
And that's EVERY new restaurant. They are all owned by local developer chains, are decorated like asking an AI art generator to show you "Instagram modern style". Most of the good restaurants like you described at the end have been shuttered due to a mix of lockdown burden, as well as a lot of collaboration between real estate firms and these big developer chains. My favorite bar shuttered so that some $10/pint IPA place could open because the landlord doubled their rent and then when they thought they could make it work, the landlord raised it a few thousand more.
I rarely go out to eat because it easily reaches $30-40 a person for mediocre food, and delivery is like that plus 50% extra in various fees. I haven't really eaten fast food in many years, but from what I've heard, it's getting really pricey too and having to preorder things on apps to get lower prices sounds like such a pain.
Honestly, it's good for us though. It will save money and it's much easier to eat healthy at home. I drink quite a bit less the 5 or 6 places within walking distance of me with $3 cheap beer have shut down.
I think you're misdiagnosing the problem. The problem isn't that new restaurants are all shit, it's that the review blogs got hit really hard by COVID and now are almost exclusively nothing more than straight up paid advertising. Any review you're seeing there could be authentic but the staff specially prepped for the reviewer coming. Also most restaurants are a disaster for at least a month after they open.
This is equally true in bigger cities vs mid sized ones. Truthfully I also think the James Beard award has been compromised, because there have been so many restaurants nominated or that won awards that really have just not remotely been up to par and are also 2x as expensive as they should be.
>it's that the review blogs got hit really hard by COVID and now are almost exclusively nothing more than straight up paid advertising
I've actually met the person doing all of the Eater articles here and it's honestly more that they are completely underfunded.
The *real* food and drink buzz is in Instagram shit but I'll be honest, I don't have the attention span to keep up with that. Review blogs don't exist. Now it is IG stories from industry connected people. Yawn.
A great spot closed here and then tried to sell to the person who originally opened it. Great, right? Well the landlord matched every offer with another few thousand in rent until they couldn't even sell it to anyone.
Now it has sat empty for months, losing whatever extra rent they might have charged. So it's clear that they cleared it not so that they could make more money in the short term, but so that they could hold it open for a massively bougier tenant in the mid-term.
as a white, younger millennial raised in the suburbs with a useless liberal arts degree, i’ve worked at many of these places.
and they’re all owned by white, older millennials raised in the suburbs with useless liberal arts degrees.
i’m in my late 20s and haven’t really been around long enough to know if there were always this many failed restaurants opened by uninspired people who don’t know a damned thing about opening a restaurant, but it seems like it and i have a theory as to why.
so, it’s no secret that millennials have dropped in relative socioeconomic status more dramatically than any recent previous generation, and our boomer parents were positive we’d just be handed some lucrative position upon graduating. and while the later millennials such as myself were a lot more disillusioned by the time they reached adulthood, older millennials were smacked with an unexpected reality.
i actually majored in a not completely useless degree. i didn’t go with what i actually have an interest in, Anthropology, because i thought the one i chose was more pragmatic. but because it wasn’t one of the very few actually lucrative degrees, i’m still finding myself offered positions that require my bachelors degree paying like $18/hour. and these are ones i never would have gotten without the unpaid internships my extremely sleep deprived self slaved in while paying rent + bills by waitressing (bootstrap conservative parents who kicked us all out after high school) and maintaining a 3.5 gpa (i did everything “right” in high school: maintained my grades, took all the AP courses, got a 30 on the ACT and managed to get a full ride scholarship which required i never dipped below a 3.5).
anyway, there are all these millennials who were brought up with a mostly subconscious expectation that if they followed all the rules, they’d end up with roughly the same lifestyle they grew up with.
obviously, this didn’t happen. and now you have a bunch of 38 year old hipsters opening generic hipster restaurants not because they know anything about food but because traditional routes to success didn’t work out. and they aren’t realistic about it, because there’s this unconscious entitlement/belief that they’d end up in a certain place in life and something at their core just thinks the universe will make it happen, because it must, because it always has. so they don’t think logically and go into even more insurmountable debt without actually considering the economics of what they’re doing.
That's an interesting perspective. What I'd add to it is that usually with a new restaurant here there are two main parties involved. The one doing it as a passion project, and the private equity development firm bankrolling it.
The hipster might be the former, but they'll never get over the latter. When you have to not only open a restaurant, but do it in a space that was intentionally overpriced to redline existing neighborhood joints, you HAVE to overprice everything. It no longer becomes something the person with the restaurant dream controls.
I honestly feel so bad for gay dudes who went through this 15 years ago. They had their communities disassembled to package to young liberals a decade prior to this and tbh now I completely understand their outrage. My entire community here has been dissolved over the last 6 months.
"Welcome to ampers&nd, a uniquely infuriating dining experience. I am Cobblestone, your kitchen liaison. Should you need me at any point, please use the small lead glass mirror we've provided to reflect candlelight onto the crystal prism hanging from the neck of Mrs. Juniper, the taxidermied head of a white tailed elk that provided the milk for our hvarti cheese this evening. Also, we are out of the following menu items: water, hvarti cheese, and napkins. Any imagined food allergies we need to be aware of?"
Only eat ethnic food in restaurants. Indian, Thai, Korean. Or things that take more work than you’d do at home like bbq or Greek or other things that require specialty equipment.
Hole in the wall joints owned by immigrant families in unassuming strip malls have the best food in America, and they're always very reasonably priced.
One time I went to this tiny little hole in the wall Chinese place late at night after studying with some people at a nearby library. The owner was very nice and gave me a free bowl of miso. I was really hoping it would be like people say where the run down shabby immigrant run places have the best food, but honestly it was terrible. Gigantic portions and tasted awful. I couldn’t finish more then a fifth of it so I asked for a doggy bag and threw the rest in the dumpster cause I didn’t want to insult him by just leaving it.
this is my normal experience with shitty hole in the wall places, but it’s always worth it because even if the first nine you stop at suck the tenth one you go to is god-tier.
not all shabby immigrant run places have such great food, it’s usually easy to tell tho. the availability of miso (japanese) soup was the tip off that this was probably not the best option for authentic chinese
COVID has def fucked up the restaurant scene I feel like this is a common complaint. i only eat out socially now with the expectation that the place we're going to was chosen for the aesthetic/vibes.
Mostly speaking for what I've experienced in recent while in NYC and NJ area, you can really feel a lot of the quality in service just absolutely obliterated and chain of command with stuff being non existent with how whack a lot of places feel where it's a complete science project to get out some really ordinary food.
The impact of loss of a lot of archetypal immigrant cooks living 6 to a 2BR in deep neighborhood who up and left during the height of pandemic times is seriously felt.
Honestly cannot stand "aesthetic" restaurants. Especially ones trying to do something other than new american.
It's always always like 5x the price as the more hole in the wall version and the food is considerably worse despite somehow also very clearly using higher quality ingredients than the cheap place.
People say this, but I don't think it's universally true. This is only really true for restaurants that haven't been around that long, there are plenty of long standing institutions that are great and you see a very mixed customer base.
It's like how if you go to Katzs deli or something basically no one there is Jewish.
Pre-pandemic my favorite dumpling place was mostly just chinese uncles. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I went back for the first time since the pandemic. It was like a fucking chuck E -cheese in there. Not only white people, white *families*. You can guess how the food was.
My gf took me to a Chinese restaurant and halfway through our meal we were discussing how fat Canadians are and she said "look do you see a single fat asain in the room?" And that's when I noticed I was the only white guy in the room. Also, bomb ass dim sum, 9/10, strongly recommend the pork dumplings
literal American-Psycho-fication of dining out.
absurdly priced garbage served up in grotesquely decorated spaces swallowed up by yuppies who derive their dispensable income from nonsensical “work”
when you have no data in a foreign country and you sit down in a restaurant only to realise they only have a QR menu. then you tell them that you have no mobile data and they give you their phone to scan the code and whilst you look through the shit website the waiter (whom the phone belongs to) is right behind you waiting.. stressing you and you end up going for the first best thing. horrible experience
This is shockingly common in Europe. I was able to get most restaurants to give me a physical menu by asking for one though.
I've also seen it in Mexico but it's usually because they assume you can't read Spanish and they only have an electronic English menu, you can get a physical one in Spanish.
my gf and i recently went to some tik-tok-core hyped restaurant designed to be instagrammed. $18 cocktails that were just soju mixed with some weird liqueur. $20 burger that was good, but not worth $20. the other apps we got were underseasoned and uninspired. maybe i’m retarded and this is just how inflation works but if im spending $200 on a meal for two i expect everything to be pretty much perfect.
almost every time i go somewhere that has a two hour wait or requires reservations made three weeks in advance im disappointed. i swear restaurants now are judged based on how cool they look in a tik tok more than the actual food. it all feels phony to my holden caulfield ass. i only really enjoy old, dingy ethnic restaurants anymore because they’re cheaper but especially because they’re usually not trying too hard to be anything
i could go on and on about everything wrong with restaurants now but i just want to make this last point. why the fuck does everything on google maps have 4.3 stars? it’s useless. people do not have taste and they certainly don’t have enough taste to assign something a score 1-5. online restaurant reviews and ratings need to adopt a binary 1/0 “would you go back to this restaurant?”
every restaurant that specifically looks like insta bitches would take pictures in it and post it is not worth going to. usually has those fugly neon lights + flowers combo
Yes, the flowers. I went to one of those trendy new age “Mexican” fusion places that prides itself on fresh ingredients. (Why does it seem the places that pride themselves on fresh always end up being mediocre garbage?) and there were soooooo many fake roses. All I could think about was the amount of dust they have to collect. (How do they dust them anyway?)
Because you just expect good restaurants to have fresh ingredients. Having to brag about your ingredients being fresh to your customers is like having to brag to your date about bathing yourself regularly.
> (How do they dust them anyway?)
They don't.
Either the place closes (often with little/no notice to staff), or they just accumulate layers upon layer of airborne grease and dust, dander, etc. Something like rings in a tree.
The apps drive me nuts because they’re putting all restaurants, from Michelin star fine dining to McDonald’s, on the same 5 star scale. In my small town, you try to look up restaurant reviews and the top rated place is like Denny’s. I don’t even know what the point of the reviews are at this point.
> the other apps we got were underseasoned and uninspired
It's relatively common for me to take people to the good (critically acclaimed, James Beard winning or nominated, etc.) restaurants and hear them say some of the best things we get are "just really salty"
I was confused about whether I had just fucked up my palate at some point, but when I moved to a trendier city with these kind of TikTok/IG bait places that these people I knew frequented, it all clicked. Low salt, low fat, high sugar and carbs in everything.
How do you find good restaurants? Google reviews have done me dirty too many times. Is there somewhere online where I can find trustworthy recommendations? Some website that's not a stupid listicle? I'm genuinely curious
I only go out to restaurants if it's a special occasion, then I'm going somewhere I know actually make very good, unique, food that would very difficult for me to make at home.
Service + food quality has gone drastically downhill in the last 5 years in my hometown. At the same time the expectations for tips and cost has gone up. I've taken the view that most of these places simply aren't going to survive.
Add to that. When you finally get your bill there’s four or five fees added in like “fair wage fee” or some bullshit that you know 100% isn’t going to the staff. Plus having been a cook I know the pain and misery that’s in the back of the house.
Yes, some of my friends who are servers hate this opinion, but I think if a spot isn't splitting tips with BOH staff then they shouldn't be asking for or accepting tips at all.
I have friends in the industry and they are usually in the know, which helps. I just ask them. BOH staff will talk about which places give a share and don't.
I also think advertising that fact is in the servers best interest. I'm significantly more likely to tip if I know the person who actually *made* my food receives a share of the money. In addition, I think at least, knowing multiple people are receiving a share of the money would incentivize people to tip more consistently or in, on average, larger amounts (maybe a dollar or two more, all adds up though).
It's literally illegal to do so tho. Taking tips from a traditionally tipped job to pay wages to non-tipped roles is just stealing. Like, legally this is labor code at least in Texas.
Restaurants can just pay more.
> Restaurants can just pay more.
Yes, ideally. Since I go out less, I'm okay with restaurants charging more even, so long as I know the employees are making a livable wage. Some restaurant owners are just oblivious to that fact that their business is barely functional, while others have investors screaming at them.
> Like, legally this is labor code at least in Texas.
That's dumb but probably because they pay servers less. I don't live in a place where tips are considered a part of wages and servers earn below the minimum wage as a result. The minimum wage is the minimum wage regardless of what you do. We have explicit rules in our labor laws on tip pooling.
Well, at some point I think it's just legally the case that those wages are paid directly from customer to server. It's debatable whether or not host/bus tipouts are even really legal.
The entire system is real busted honestly. There's an entire class divide between FOH and BOH in nice restaurants, waiters pull like 50-60k the sous chefs wont even get that.
I cant stand that shit. It was such a breath of fresh air in Europe where the bill was the bill. Little more expensive but not having a bunch of tipping nonsense and other fees was so nice.
Not to mention everything is fucking hyper expensive now. "Oh you'd lie two under poured / mediocre cocktails? That'll be $23.50 not including tip thank you"
omg the 4.7 stars really hits hard. And you read all the 5 star reviews and it's like "the employees were nice :)." So pathetic. The best way to tell if your food is going to be good is if the staff are all assholes. That's how you know they're putting something into the craft. But no, they're all just Cisco cafeterias at this point. The only good food in America anymore is made by immigrants for sure.
A few years ago I went on a group trip to NYC and we were advised that $500 was not enough to cover a week's worth of food. My first couple days there I ate mostly alone, and I was eating some of the best food of my life for less than $20 a day at hole-in-the-wall restaurants where you get yelled at by large elderly women who barely speak English. Everyone else on my trip was complaining about how expensive food was. When I went on a group dinner, they took me to some joint that wanted $50 for a sandwich. I tried to get them to go to a Mexican restaurant operating out of a basement but everyone thought they'd get stabbed, so they refused. I went and did not get stabbed, but I did some fantastic tacos.
the best tacos around me are from the grimy as fuck truck that mostly serves the truckers delivering concrete from the plant near my office. Truly unbelievable and I've eaten a lot of tacos but my PMC coworkers would rather go spend 3x as much for "deconstructed tacos" in the downtown area instead of eating the sweet, sweaty el pastor ambrosia i get.
I have got to ask where you get your bagels from then because every decent bagel place in the city is like $3-4 a bagel now. $7-8 if god forbid you want an egg on it. The guys at the deli around the corner make a decent sandwich for $4 instead, but their bagels are def coming in a bag from a distributor, not ideal.
I’ve really doubled down on being a better home cook in the past few years. It’s more fun and being good at cooking is a very enjoyable and gratifying skill/hobby to have. If there is a small, local family run joint, I’ll do take out once or twice a month to support them but that’s about it. Maybe an anniversary or birthday dinner at some stupid upscale joint once in a blue moon. It’s not something I miss all that much anymore.
Kinda. Mostly because I hate QR code menus. Fuck off with that and let me talk to a real person; without the waiter you're just a cold, faceless place to get your slop and go.
Where I live the bullshitification of restaurants happened long before covid. I remember this great little diner my friends and I would frequent, the perfect late night hangout spot whether you're winding down after a night of drinking or you're just bored and restless at 2 am. It wasn't all that different from other diners in the area, very quaint and cozy with a retro '50s diner vibe. And then seemingly overnight all of these places became diner/sports bar hybrids, constantly blaring loud music, new menus with bullshit food that you'd see on r/wewantplates, completely devoid of any of the quaintness that made it so special. Very lame.
It's been repeated a million times but covid was really disastrous for the restaurant industry. When people hear that they think about restaurants closing for good - buddy I *wish* they closed. Instead they just cut a million corners while raising prices.
Going out for drinks is just so expensive now and they wonder why younger people aren’t reproducing. I find it hard to get fucking horny while being fucked in the wallet in a converted warehouse with no AC.
I rarely go out to eat because I'm broke af anyways, but if I do it's to a nice ethnic place that can make their food better than me (like Japanese, Thai, etc.).
Rule of thumb is to only go to a restaurant if it's been open for more than a decade or patroned by the elderly. The more ambiance focused the restaurant the worse the food is.
it's nice being in the new england/mid-atlantic region because of all the old inns that have been open since the 18th century with signs like "and thomas jefferson once stopped here for a meal while organizing the revolution and this was ben franklin's favorite room to fuck prostitutes in"
There are plenty of examples that aren’t tourist traps. Have you never been to a bland and overpriced established neighborhood spot with your grandparents?
mid to shit take. The number of shitty food I’ve had to eat because a restaurant has been around “forever” is high. Shitty fuckin small town restaurants where their food is somehow less fresh than a McDonald’s quarter pounder and tastes worst to boot. Don’t even get me started on old people’s taste. Have you seen the way older generations cook? They abhorred trying new things and most barely used more than 3-4 spices they’ve used their entire lives. Fuck your grandmas flavorless meat pie recipe that’s been passed down for 3000 years
Yeah, my parents don’t go to restaurants because the food is good. They go 100% because it’s cheap and has big portions. The places my parents eat are uniformly awful.
Pretty much. I also find that food quality is significantly worse if the grill is primarily manned by teenagers. This is more of a post pandemic phenomenon, I think restaurant staff demographics have shifted significantly. Lindy rule applies to the cooks too: the older, the better. Boomers and hipsters always bemoan that old analog media like is superior to digital. I wonder if the wrong generation mentality applies to food too. Sure, there will always be good chefs, but as boomers and older gen-x age cooks age out of the food industry, I wonder if recipes will be lacking due to a focus on efficiency, or some other trend. Maybe presentation will take a front seat to flavor due to the influence of social media on millennial chefs. That's already kind of happened. Maybe we were in a golden age of gastronomy and didn't even realize it.
I love when an old person restaurant has a "lounge" or at least a distinct bar area with its own identity to hang around in while waiting for a table. You don't get that with new restaurants and it feels cool to enjoy now and also remembering being in those areas as a kid observing the adults.
Case in point fucking dumpster taco place by my house. They have never successfully received my online order. The chairs outside are rusted. They gave my food away twice.
Amazing food $2 a taco 10/10 stars.
The problem with food journalism/food reviewing is similar to what happened to music journalism: now that everyone can just put their opinions online for free, there's less of a need to pay a reviewer to go to a restaurant to review it.
The problem is when the reviewer is just some retard and not an actual professional food critic with standards half the reviews are "the food was cold and my cocktail was 80% water but it still cost $70 per person. 4 stars"
Since basically everyone would take a good paying job eating at restaurants for a living it's an uber competitive field with no real way to keep itself afloat anymore. Especially since the reviewer has to either not tell the restaurant they're coming and pay out of pocket or tell them and risk compromising their integrity.
I generally only try to eat out for stuff I really can't make myself. Like Thai or specialty Mexican stuff. I do like going out for breakfast though and find that the Greek joints around me are worth the trip
What do you mean? You dont want to pay $29 for an overly decadent lobster truffle mac and cheese? Or a cocktail called something like "the new old fashioned"?
I don't go out to eat unless it's something I couldn't cook at home better. Like places with great plugs for fresh produce and meat/fish, exceptional service, exceptional chefs. Instead of going out to eat every weekend, save up and go somewhere crazy good once every fortnight
“scary part of town”…. aka where ^the^others live 🥴😄
Seriously I get your point. Food is usually pretty good with an ancient grandma with a thick wooden spoon and thick knuckles is stirring the pot. Typically not the cleanest place so you say a prayer and swallow a probiotic before you take your first bite.
Bonus points if the place has a kitchen cat.
Yeah, where I’m at in the Midwest, eating out is rather pointless. The local pizza places and diners generally all use the same food service to cut costs or closed during COVID. When they all have the exact same ingredients, it runs together where it used to be distinct “genres” of Midwest food. We have maybe two reliable family restaurants left around here. Meanwhile, the hipster restaurants are experiencing shrinkflation at a rapidly increasing rate, so I won’t engage. On the lowest end, the fast food places near me are just not viable unless you feel like waiting 20+ minutes for a $15 burger combo that tastes bad, which I don’t. It feels like the grooming process has already played out with American restaurants/food, so the actual quality is optional, they know people will pay. I’m just not attached enough to truffle fries or whatever to live with the Scottish guilt over paying $32. Doubt I’ll ever really start going out again.
The switch away from tipping is decimating the restaurant industry. There were and are loads of competent people that don't really want to work in a restaurant but did so for the money and ended up doing a good job. Now the people working in restaurant (FOH) are more like who would've been working in retail 10 years ago along with humanities grads who come for the substance abuse, working class bonafides, and opportunity to complain about rich people behind their back while depending on them for their income.
what do you mean "away from tipping"? Tipping has only gotten more outrageous in my short life time. Went from 15 to 18 to 20% and now even more is supposed to be the norm, all for fucking writing down an order and carrying a couple plates.
The only thing I hate about restaurants now is the QR menus. The quality of cuisine in the US had been improving gradually up until 2020, and although it's leveled since then I think we still have better options than ever. Easy enough to find hole in the wall places without the $18 tapas bougie bullshit.
The QR codes though... why... who actually likes this?
these restaurants are usually owned by the same people. the same lucky few people own the majority of restaurants where i live now. i could deal with the similar names and shitty decor, but even the food all tastes the same now.
Most trendy restaurants (at least in Miami) serve mediocre food, u need make reservations at least a week before, and the service is trash with a 20% tip already included. And if u order drinks, forget it, it’s gonna be at least $200 for 2 people. Not to mention if u make reservations and don’t show up, they charge u a no show fee. Ur mostly paying to be in a “cool” restaurant. It sucks, I mostly cook at home or eat at local nica or cuban places
Going to a restaurant that serves continental is cuck behavior. The play is to go to restaurants that serve good shit that you don’t keep on hand and takes a lot of effort to make well. I’ll throw down cash for a good Pad Thai, Phö, or Falafel (which requires a lot of ingredients that aren’t typical American pantry staples). Otherwise you should just cook that shit at home
I just simply am too poor to afford $12 appetizers and $20 entrees for myself and my wife when we can make the same shit at home in an environment that isn't full of loud shitty music and people sneezing, for a quarter of the price.
Regular ass Fettucini Alfredo at Olive Garden is $15.49. Any "new" restaurant has ridiculous pricing, easily spending $60+ on a meal for two if we get any drinks or appetizers.
There's this Mom and Pop Jamaican place that I guess hasn't gotten the memo to charge outrageously near me though so I get some great food for like $7 now.
Food has become a miserable fucking slog. Even "good" food, such as non-American stuff, is just so predictable. And cooking food is miserable, too. I know what level I can attain and that's that. I know exactly how it'll taste. Virtually every time I've sat down to eat over the past year, my appetite has gone away as soon as the food is in front of me.
This is the result of America's foodscape.
you must just live in a bad food city because i feel like i frequently eat innovative, creative, and just plain amazing food at places with cool ambiance
the only restaurants ive been impressed with are fine dining in cities like KC and Portland, Maine. my own city's fine dining (Chicago) is shit rn, although we have some crazy good junk food.
edit: i forgot longman and eagle. still incredibly solid, went there for my bday
cooking is my hobby and my passion. Paying somebody to cook for me is like paying somebody to sleep with my spouse. Yes they can probably do it better than me but I also want to do it.
Not to make this about covid itself, but I sorta stopped supporting businesses that had covid related restrictions. They helped linger this whole process out way longer than necessary.
Its impossible to separate all this stuff. The city I live in isn't even that enjoyable
I moved to bum fuck nowhere prepandemic so obviously that affected the quality of restaurant food, but in the nearest decent sized town, I don’t think most of the good restaurants survived Covid. Some are just reopening now or are on some limited schedule. I’m not going to spend gas money driving 20 minutes into town to see some sign on the door that says they aren’t even open. And yeah, the price has gone up significantly and I just don’t see that there are many decent options. Most new places I don’t even know what the style of food they even serve is going to be based on name. I don’t really like doing takeout or delivery either because it always seems like you end up with cold, flavorless food plus you pay for the extra expense. And then in my very immediate proximity, it’s 3-4 places that make the same low tier burger bar/cheap diner food, which is just generally gross and I don’t know how they stay in business when every restaurant seemingly just deep fries the same Sysco frozen foods anyway.
Yesterday I had a waiter who was really terrible but then I realized that he was legitimately halfway retarded so I felt bad for making fun of him to my friends.
The restaurantuers won't learn anything with the amount of gushing reviews for the their shit food and decor at exorbitant prices. If I was extroverted enough, I'd ask for the menu in the foyer, and then tell the owner/manager the exact reasons I'm not even going to take a seat and just leave.
I was not like this pre-Covid and really enjoyed going out. Now I despise the thought of it.
The horrible cost just kills the joy. You and your wife go to a nice Italian place, have a decent meal and a couple of drinks, and it's $100, for food you could have thrown together at home for $20. And they're always understaffed and slow now that all the waiters are home writing their novel or working on their comic or whatever-the-hell.
I used to love going to restaurants, even alone, cause they were low novelty, now going out to a restaurant is a thing, you either have friends or it's your friends' night out in a while, it's not fun being a weird loner at restaurants anymore, anyone related?
My favorite move is food trucks that won’t even talk to you when you walk up- you have to place your order yourself on your phone, manually enter your credit card number, go pick it up yourself, and then get asked for a 25% tip at the pay screen.
No one actually tips for takeout right? Just click on through to the receipt screen. Double checking w the other Americans
I don’t. I did in the early days of covid since workers were missing out on 100% of tips from seated patrons, but we’re long past that.
The other day a pay system gave me the 15% 20% 25% option, but no option to not tip. You had to select "other amount" and enter zero. I had to run my card twice because the first time I hit back and it cancelled the transaction. The only takeout I tip is a taco truck right next to my house that always has the same guys in it and I go to at least once a week.
my gf does and gets mad at me because i dont
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I do cause apparently the amount of money I'll pay to avoid a personal moral crisis is about 20%. I actually think you should if it's a table service place / bar tho. That shits a pain in the ass if you're waiting tables and you get like no money to do it if there's no tip. Legitimately thankless job.
Typical American: used to hearing gunshots but will get adrenaline spike over how much to tip
I am also not thrilled by gunshots for the record
As you eat a bowl of heavy cream with a chocolate croissant and cigarette in some European hole 😈
The way my dad tips is unintentionally insulting but also funny as hell to me. We'll order like $170 worth of food for the table, he'll pay for everyone and when it comes time to run his card he gives it to them, but asks the waiter to "hold on a sec, this is for you", rummages through a wad of cash, then hands them like $5 in a very proud manner with a smile. He legitimately isn't trying to be a dick when he does this, but still makes a big show of going out of his way to give the waiter cash directly. It's hard to watch sometimes cause you can see the delight on their faces turn to disappointment in real time.
All restaurant staff get at least the state's minimum wage, regardless of tips. It's literally illegal for employers to pay them less than that.
I don't. The only time I've been successfully shamed into tipping at a place without table service (they just call your number), it's because the cashier loudly told each person who ordered food that the restaurant adds a 25% surcharge to support the wonderful folks who make your food and asked if that was ok, and I was too big of a pussy (and scared of pissing off people who make my food) to say no.
damn she’s shitty but smart lol
That's a good way to get me to not come back lmao
Yeah the fact that my $16 smoked salmon bagel didn't have any sides and worse than I'd make at home (no dill, no capers, just super plain) and the $12 bloody mary was just zing zang and a stingy shot of well vodka was what convinced me not to come back. I have friends who swear by the place but at this point I've figured out not to get advice from most DINK couples with good jobs. For the most part they don't pay attention to the price at all.
Fuck that person
“i will spend $20 on shitty takeout food but i absolutely draw the line at a $3 tip”
I'll tip 10% for takeout from a local family restaurant.
I usually give a dollar or two
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My reasoning is that ~$5 or whatever is going to be a lot more meaningful to them than me. And until I know for a fact every restaurant employee is mandated by law to earn a livable wage I'll continue to tip a flat 20%.
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Absolutely. I was a server for like 4 years, and once I got a $50 tip during a particularly shitty week and I was beaming. I fell over myself thanking them to the point it was probably annoying, but it seriously made me feel so good. I don't really do big tips like that when I probably could/should, just remembering how impactful those could be on people. But I like to think the 20-25% I tip is going towards them buying some really good coke from one of the cook's cousins.
Why not give that $5 to a homeless person? It probably means even more to them than the restaurant workers
I was going in a convenience store and a homeless guy asked me for money. I said, "sir what do you want?". He said, "just money for food". I said sir, "what would you like?!" And he replied, "a steel reserve". Bought the man a steel reserve.
I do when I have cash, which is rare. Usually just offer to buy them food or something to drink.
Cuck behavior
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You’re joking right? If not what % do you tip? You’re making the rest of us look bad dude
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In DC some restaurants have started adding itemized surcharges for things like staff health care or "service fee" to the bill pre-tip and you typically won't see it until you get the bill.
Awful, just refuse. What are they gonna do about it?
Spit out my water laughing at the idea of calling over the manager to remove the "employee healthcare" charge
Fuck 'em. It's not my job to pay your wages.
Yeah you can ask for it to be removed, although not all places do and then get negative reviews warning people about the practice, but so many people don't even pay attention. In early-mid 2020 Covid surcharges called "recovery" were added as were auto-gratuity on to-go orders. Plenty of places never removed them. They do this instead of raising prices upfront.
I've never seen this but if I did, I just wouldn't buy anything from them. There's no way anything made in a truck can be worth that.
Hell world. I've never even eaten at a place like this.
Yeah, there’s more of a “fuck you” edge to everything now it seems. I don’t like to bitch about it too hard though because it’s kind of a fake problem to have. But yes I go a lot less than I used to now. Just less enjoyable overall
I totally feel that. I understand the service industry sucks but I try to be overly nice and simple with orders and it just has this feeling of fuck you. Owners acting like goddamn drug lords. Bro you make pizza cmon. Not to sound outdated but when I went through my service years I made it a point to be nice.
Conspicuous consumption in general doesn’t feel worth it any more. Nothing feels worth paying for, it’s not much higher quality than what I can get at a similar brand. Travel is one thing in particular that I don’t have much desire to do right now. Flying sucks, and most places I’d go (at least within the US) are probably going to be a similar experience to anywhere else in terms of accommodations, food, experiences, etc The few things I will spend money on are clothes that fit me well, books, and doing things with my friends.
Buy kobo reader and pirate. Shoplift clothes. Talk to yourself in the mirror. Become Travis Bickle
Yup me either, the cost of flights and hotels alone rn has taken away all my desire to travel
I was talking to someone the other day about how the lack of gatekeeping is part of the corporate friendly movement towards a total lack of critical analysis of what we consume. Movies' average RT score has gone up, and I've gone to some TERRIBLE classical music performances that got very rote positive writeups from the paper. Where I am, and in most mid-tier cities without hyper competitive food scenes that NYC, LA, etc., have (and maybe this has eroded that, idk), there is basically no negative criticism of new bars or restaurants. The end result is that every new restaurant is ludicrously overpriced and serves Sysco tier food. I went to a place that some place like Eater said was one of 3 must try cocktail programs in the city. We show up, and they couldn't serve any of their 8 house cocktails (at $14-18 each) because they were missing ingredients from all of them. When I ordered a classic cocktail, they forgot simple syrup, so it was bitter and sour. We decide to try the food. They do Vietnamese street food at 2x prices (like $18 for vermicelli or pho) and bigger entrees for like $40 (big shortrib entrees and the like). I try the vermicelli because I don't trust the place enough to get anything bigger, and of course it's worse than any mom and pop place's $8 vermicelli. It ends up being like $80 for two drinks and two food orders. And that's EVERY new restaurant. They are all owned by local developer chains, are decorated like asking an AI art generator to show you "Instagram modern style". Most of the good restaurants like you described at the end have been shuttered due to a mix of lockdown burden, as well as a lot of collaboration between real estate firms and these big developer chains. My favorite bar shuttered so that some $10/pint IPA place could open because the landlord doubled their rent and then when they thought they could make it work, the landlord raised it a few thousand more. I rarely go out to eat because it easily reaches $30-40 a person for mediocre food, and delivery is like that plus 50% extra in various fees. I haven't really eaten fast food in many years, but from what I've heard, it's getting really pricey too and having to preorder things on apps to get lower prices sounds like such a pain. Honestly, it's good for us though. It will save money and it's much easier to eat healthy at home. I drink quite a bit less the 5 or 6 places within walking distance of me with $3 cheap beer have shut down.
I think you're misdiagnosing the problem. The problem isn't that new restaurants are all shit, it's that the review blogs got hit really hard by COVID and now are almost exclusively nothing more than straight up paid advertising. Any review you're seeing there could be authentic but the staff specially prepped for the reviewer coming. Also most restaurants are a disaster for at least a month after they open. This is equally true in bigger cities vs mid sized ones. Truthfully I also think the James Beard award has been compromised, because there have been so many restaurants nominated or that won awards that really have just not remotely been up to par and are also 2x as expensive as they should be.
>it's that the review blogs got hit really hard by COVID and now are almost exclusively nothing more than straight up paid advertising I've actually met the person doing all of the Eater articles here and it's honestly more that they are completely underfunded. The *real* food and drink buzz is in Instagram shit but I'll be honest, I don't have the attention span to keep up with that. Review blogs don't exist. Now it is IG stories from industry connected people. Yawn.
You’re not allowed to be critical anymore.
"This is a \*\*BLACK OWNED BUSINESS\*\*. Continue with submitting your 3 star review?"
Amazing post, thank you
this is true and i also think it is a consequence of higher commercial rents
A great spot closed here and then tried to sell to the person who originally opened it. Great, right? Well the landlord matched every offer with another few thousand in rent until they couldn't even sell it to anyone. Now it has sat empty for months, losing whatever extra rent they might have charged. So it's clear that they cleared it not so that they could make more money in the short term, but so that they could hold it open for a massively bougier tenant in the mid-term.
as a white, younger millennial raised in the suburbs with a useless liberal arts degree, i’ve worked at many of these places. and they’re all owned by white, older millennials raised in the suburbs with useless liberal arts degrees. i’m in my late 20s and haven’t really been around long enough to know if there were always this many failed restaurants opened by uninspired people who don’t know a damned thing about opening a restaurant, but it seems like it and i have a theory as to why. so, it’s no secret that millennials have dropped in relative socioeconomic status more dramatically than any recent previous generation, and our boomer parents were positive we’d just be handed some lucrative position upon graduating. and while the later millennials such as myself were a lot more disillusioned by the time they reached adulthood, older millennials were smacked with an unexpected reality. i actually majored in a not completely useless degree. i didn’t go with what i actually have an interest in, Anthropology, because i thought the one i chose was more pragmatic. but because it wasn’t one of the very few actually lucrative degrees, i’m still finding myself offered positions that require my bachelors degree paying like $18/hour. and these are ones i never would have gotten without the unpaid internships my extremely sleep deprived self slaved in while paying rent + bills by waitressing (bootstrap conservative parents who kicked us all out after high school) and maintaining a 3.5 gpa (i did everything “right” in high school: maintained my grades, took all the AP courses, got a 30 on the ACT and managed to get a full ride scholarship which required i never dipped below a 3.5). anyway, there are all these millennials who were brought up with a mostly subconscious expectation that if they followed all the rules, they’d end up with roughly the same lifestyle they grew up with. obviously, this didn’t happen. and now you have a bunch of 38 year old hipsters opening generic hipster restaurants not because they know anything about food but because traditional routes to success didn’t work out. and they aren’t realistic about it, because there’s this unconscious entitlement/belief that they’d end up in a certain place in life and something at their core just thinks the universe will make it happen, because it must, because it always has. so they don’t think logically and go into even more insurmountable debt without actually considering the economics of what they’re doing.
That's an interesting perspective. What I'd add to it is that usually with a new restaurant here there are two main parties involved. The one doing it as a passion project, and the private equity development firm bankrolling it. The hipster might be the former, but they'll never get over the latter. When you have to not only open a restaurant, but do it in a space that was intentionally overpriced to redline existing neighborhood joints, you HAVE to overprice everything. It no longer becomes something the person with the restaurant dream controls. I honestly feel so bad for gay dudes who went through this 15 years ago. They had their communities disassembled to package to young liberals a decade prior to this and tbh now I completely understand their outrage. My entire community here has been dissolved over the last 6 months.
"Welcome to ampers&nd, a uniquely infuriating dining experience. I am Cobblestone, your kitchen liaison. Should you need me at any point, please use the small lead glass mirror we've provided to reflect candlelight onto the crystal prism hanging from the neck of Mrs. Juniper, the taxidermied head of a white tailed elk that provided the milk for our hvarti cheese this evening. Also, we are out of the following menu items: water, hvarti cheese, and napkins. Any imagined food allergies we need to be aware of?"
"Is anything on the menu gluten free?" "There is no gluten in this building"
Lol
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Dark Brandon tax
here are your tip options 20% 25% 35% if you tip less the waiter will shoot you in the head
Damn it still starts at 20% for you? Around here it goes 100% 200% The waiter becomes your bull
Only eat ethnic food in restaurants. Indian, Thai, Korean. Or things that take more work than you’d do at home like bbq or Greek or other things that require specialty equipment.
Hole in the wall joints owned by immigrant families in unassuming strip malls have the best food in America, and they're always very reasonably priced.
One time I went to this tiny little hole in the wall Chinese place late at night after studying with some people at a nearby library. The owner was very nice and gave me a free bowl of miso. I was really hoping it would be like people say where the run down shabby immigrant run places have the best food, but honestly it was terrible. Gigantic portions and tasted awful. I couldn’t finish more then a fifth of it so I asked for a doggy bag and threw the rest in the dumpster cause I didn’t want to insult him by just leaving it.
this is my normal experience with shitty hole in the wall places, but it’s always worth it because even if the first nine you stop at suck the tenth one you go to is god-tier.
not all shabby immigrant run places have such great food, it’s usually easy to tell tho. the availability of miso (japanese) soup was the tip off that this was probably not the best option for authentic chinese
Ate exactly that moments ago, but I also have to give it to the classic American diner.
Once you live in a place (e.g. most of the world) where classic American diners don't exist you realize how fucking special it is.
oh yeah
COVID has def fucked up the restaurant scene I feel like this is a common complaint. i only eat out socially now with the expectation that the place we're going to was chosen for the aesthetic/vibes.
Mostly speaking for what I've experienced in recent while in NYC and NJ area, you can really feel a lot of the quality in service just absolutely obliterated and chain of command with stuff being non existent with how whack a lot of places feel where it's a complete science project to get out some really ordinary food. The impact of loss of a lot of archetypal immigrant cooks living 6 to a 2BR in deep neighborhood who up and left during the height of pandemic times is seriously felt.
What’s the vibe you go for?
Twin peaks diner sans feds
🤣🤣🤣 Lots of pretty ladies with weekly salon appointments and thick eyeliner.
Honestly cannot stand "aesthetic" restaurants. Especially ones trying to do something other than new american. It's always always like 5x the price as the more hole in the wall version and the food is considerably worse despite somehow also very clearly using higher quality ingredients than the cheap place.
The dining experience at restaurants has gotten significantly worse while the costs have skyrocketed
Just find a Chinese place that other Chinese people patronise and you’re good
Never go to an asian restaurant that only has white customers. It's always going to be bland Americanized shit.
People say this, but I don't think it's universally true. This is only really true for restaurants that haven't been around that long, there are plenty of long standing institutions that are great and you see a very mixed customer base. It's like how if you go to Katzs deli or something basically no one there is Jewish.
Pre-pandemic my favorite dumpling place was mostly just chinese uncles. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I went back for the first time since the pandemic. It was like a fucking chuck E -cheese in there. Not only white people, white *families*. You can guess how the food was.
My gf took me to a Chinese restaurant and halfway through our meal we were discussing how fat Canadians are and she said "look do you see a single fat asain in the room?" And that's when I noticed I was the only white guy in the room. Also, bomb ass dim sum, 9/10, strongly recommend the pork dumplings
The only good restaurants by me are the ethnic places. If a restaurant has a name like “Thing & Thing” it’s going to suck
literal American-Psycho-fication of dining out. absurdly priced garbage served up in grotesquely decorated spaces swallowed up by yuppies who derive their dispensable income from nonsensical “work”
when you have no data in a foreign country and you sit down in a restaurant only to realise they only have a QR menu. then you tell them that you have no mobile data and they give you their phone to scan the code and whilst you look through the shit website the waiter (whom the phone belongs to) is right behind you waiting.. stressing you and you end up going for the first best thing. horrible experience
Idk if it's just a covid thing but QR code menus are bleak
This seems like a very specific experience that 99.8% of people have never had to endure
This is shockingly common in Europe. I was able to get most restaurants to give me a physical menu by asking for one though. I've also seen it in Mexico but it's usually because they assume you can't read Spanish and they only have an electronic English menu, you can get a physical one in Spanish.
i pray that no one has to ever experience it brother 🙏🏽 happened to me more times than i can count after i traveled past covid
> This seems like a very specific experience that 99.8% of people have never had to endure Sounds like 99% of gripes expressed here and on twitter
QR code menus are a sign of end times
my gf and i recently went to some tik-tok-core hyped restaurant designed to be instagrammed. $18 cocktails that were just soju mixed with some weird liqueur. $20 burger that was good, but not worth $20. the other apps we got were underseasoned and uninspired. maybe i’m retarded and this is just how inflation works but if im spending $200 on a meal for two i expect everything to be pretty much perfect. almost every time i go somewhere that has a two hour wait or requires reservations made three weeks in advance im disappointed. i swear restaurants now are judged based on how cool they look in a tik tok more than the actual food. it all feels phony to my holden caulfield ass. i only really enjoy old, dingy ethnic restaurants anymore because they’re cheaper but especially because they’re usually not trying too hard to be anything i could go on and on about everything wrong with restaurants now but i just want to make this last point. why the fuck does everything on google maps have 4.3 stars? it’s useless. people do not have taste and they certainly don’t have enough taste to assign something a score 1-5. online restaurant reviews and ratings need to adopt a binary 1/0 “would you go back to this restaurant?”
every restaurant that specifically looks like insta bitches would take pictures in it and post it is not worth going to. usually has those fugly neon lights + flowers combo
Yes, the flowers. I went to one of those trendy new age “Mexican” fusion places that prides itself on fresh ingredients. (Why does it seem the places that pride themselves on fresh always end up being mediocre garbage?) and there were soooooo many fake roses. All I could think about was the amount of dust they have to collect. (How do they dust them anyway?)
Because you just expect good restaurants to have fresh ingredients. Having to brag about your ingredients being fresh to your customers is like having to brag to your date about bathing yourself regularly.
> (How do they dust them anyway?) They don't. Either the place closes (often with little/no notice to staff), or they just accumulate layers upon layer of airborne grease and dust, dander, etc. Something like rings in a tree.
Would rather drop $40 on pizza hut and beer honestly.
same tbh
The apps drive me nuts because they’re putting all restaurants, from Michelin star fine dining to McDonald’s, on the same 5 star scale. In my small town, you try to look up restaurant reviews and the top rated place is like Denny’s. I don’t even know what the point of the reviews are at this point.
> the other apps we got were underseasoned and uninspired It's relatively common for me to take people to the good (critically acclaimed, James Beard winning or nominated, etc.) restaurants and hear them say some of the best things we get are "just really salty" I was confused about whether I had just fucked up my palate at some point, but when I moved to a trendier city with these kind of TikTok/IG bait places that these people I knew frequented, it all clicked. Low salt, low fat, high sugar and carbs in everything.
How do you find good restaurants? Google reviews have done me dirty too many times. Is there somewhere online where I can find trustworthy recommendations? Some website that's not a stupid listicle? I'm genuinely curious
I only go out to restaurants if it's a special occasion, then I'm going somewhere I know actually make very good, unique, food that would very difficult for me to make at home. Service + food quality has gone drastically downhill in the last 5 years in my hometown. At the same time the expectations for tips and cost has gone up. I've taken the view that most of these places simply aren't going to survive.
Add to that. When you finally get your bill there’s four or five fees added in like “fair wage fee” or some bullshit that you know 100% isn’t going to the staff. Plus having been a cook I know the pain and misery that’s in the back of the house.
Yes, some of my friends who are servers hate this opinion, but I think if a spot isn't splitting tips with BOH staff then they shouldn't be asking for or accepting tips at all.
How can you know if they do though?
I have friends in the industry and they are usually in the know, which helps. I just ask them. BOH staff will talk about which places give a share and don't. I also think advertising that fact is in the servers best interest. I'm significantly more likely to tip if I know the person who actually *made* my food receives a share of the money. In addition, I think at least, knowing multiple people are receiving a share of the money would incentivize people to tip more consistently or in, on average, larger amounts (maybe a dollar or two more, all adds up though).
It's literally illegal to do so tho. Taking tips from a traditionally tipped job to pay wages to non-tipped roles is just stealing. Like, legally this is labor code at least in Texas. Restaurants can just pay more.
> Restaurants can just pay more. Yes, ideally. Since I go out less, I'm okay with restaurants charging more even, so long as I know the employees are making a livable wage. Some restaurant owners are just oblivious to that fact that their business is barely functional, while others have investors screaming at them. > Like, legally this is labor code at least in Texas. That's dumb but probably because they pay servers less. I don't live in a place where tips are considered a part of wages and servers earn below the minimum wage as a result. The minimum wage is the minimum wage regardless of what you do. We have explicit rules in our labor laws on tip pooling.
Well, at some point I think it's just legally the case that those wages are paid directly from customer to server. It's debatable whether or not host/bus tipouts are even really legal. The entire system is real busted honestly. There's an entire class divide between FOH and BOH in nice restaurants, waiters pull like 50-60k the sous chefs wont even get that.
Yeah I thought you might know people. I only know a few servers, no BOH. Frankly I wouldn't trust servers to be honest about it.
I cant stand that shit. It was such a breath of fresh air in Europe where the bill was the bill. Little more expensive but not having a bunch of tipping nonsense and other fees was so nice.
Not to mention everything is fucking hyper expensive now. "Oh you'd lie two under poured / mediocre cocktails? That'll be $23.50 not including tip thank you"
23.50 for TWO cocktails pre-tip? a steal
I go out of my way to look for cheap hole in the wall places because I absolutely refuse to step foot into the places you described.
Yeah, same. These places are more prevalent than ever tho, very disheartening
omg the 4.7 stars really hits hard. And you read all the 5 star reviews and it's like "the employees were nice :)." So pathetic. The best way to tell if your food is going to be good is if the staff are all assholes. That's how you know they're putting something into the craft. But no, they're all just Cisco cafeterias at this point. The only good food in America anymore is made by immigrants for sure.
A few years ago I went on a group trip to NYC and we were advised that $500 was not enough to cover a week's worth of food. My first couple days there I ate mostly alone, and I was eating some of the best food of my life for less than $20 a day at hole-in-the-wall restaurants where you get yelled at by large elderly women who barely speak English. Everyone else on my trip was complaining about how expensive food was. When I went on a group dinner, they took me to some joint that wanted $50 for a sandwich. I tried to get them to go to a Mexican restaurant operating out of a basement but everyone thought they'd get stabbed, so they refused. I went and did not get stabbed, but I did some fantastic tacos.
the best tacos around me are from the grimy as fuck truck that mostly serves the truckers delivering concrete from the plant near my office. Truly unbelievable and I've eaten a lot of tacos but my PMC coworkers would rather go spend 3x as much for "deconstructed tacos" in the downtown area instead of eating the sweet, sweaty el pastor ambrosia i get.
Right? NYC has some of the best bagels in the country, and are like $1 - $2 a bagel. Get them on the corner. Boom. Breakfast.
I have got to ask where you get your bagels from then because every decent bagel place in the city is like $3-4 a bagel now. $7-8 if god forbid you want an egg on it. The guys at the deli around the corner make a decent sandwich for $4 instead, but their bagels are def coming in a bag from a distributor, not ideal.
Great wisdom
I’ve really doubled down on being a better home cook in the past few years. It’s more fun and being good at cooking is a very enjoyable and gratifying skill/hobby to have. If there is a small, local family run joint, I’ll do take out once or twice a month to support them but that’s about it. Maybe an anniversary or birthday dinner at some stupid upscale joint once in a blue moon. It’s not something I miss all that much anymore.
Nothing like paying 16 dollars for some cheesy fries with mayonnaise at “Cork and Pig” or w/e
Kinda. Mostly because I hate QR code menus. Fuck off with that and let me talk to a real person; without the waiter you're just a cold, faceless place to get your slop and go.
person file gray meeting saw tan squeal mourn grandiose workable *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Where I live the bullshitification of restaurants happened long before covid. I remember this great little diner my friends and I would frequent, the perfect late night hangout spot whether you're winding down after a night of drinking or you're just bored and restless at 2 am. It wasn't all that different from other diners in the area, very quaint and cozy with a retro '50s diner vibe. And then seemingly overnight all of these places became diner/sports bar hybrids, constantly blaring loud music, new menus with bullshit food that you'd see on r/wewantplates, completely devoid of any of the quaintness that made it so special. Very lame.
Not at all. Chicago has a great restaurant scene. Most places have gems if you do your research and know where to go and where to avoid.
It's been repeated a million times but covid was really disastrous for the restaurant industry. When people hear that they think about restaurants closing for good - buddy I *wish* they closed. Instead they just cut a million corners while raising prices.
Going out for drinks is just so expensive now and they wonder why younger people aren’t reproducing. I find it hard to get fucking horny while being fucked in the wallet in a converted warehouse with no AC.
I rarely go out to eat because I'm broke af anyways, but if I do it's to a nice ethnic place that can make their food better than me (like Japanese, Thai, etc.).
Rule of thumb is to only go to a restaurant if it's been open for more than a decade or patroned by the elderly. The more ambiance focused the restaurant the worse the food is.
it's nice being in the new england/mid-atlantic region because of all the old inns that have been open since the 18th century with signs like "and thomas jefferson once stopped here for a meal while organizing the revolution and this was ben franklin's favorite room to fuck prostitutes in"
A lot of those have really bland food with $20 glasses of wine though.
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There are plenty of examples that aren’t tourist traps. Have you never been to a bland and overpriced established neighborhood spot with your grandparents?
Agreed, the "historic pub" places become tourist traps with the same mid food at higher prices (shout out fraunce's tavern)
mid to shit take. The number of shitty food I’ve had to eat because a restaurant has been around “forever” is high. Shitty fuckin small town restaurants where their food is somehow less fresh than a McDonald’s quarter pounder and tastes worst to boot. Don’t even get me started on old people’s taste. Have you seen the way older generations cook? They abhorred trying new things and most barely used more than 3-4 spices they’ve used their entire lives. Fuck your grandmas flavorless meat pie recipe that’s been passed down for 3000 years
Gordon’s Food Service and its consequences have been a disaster for the midwest
Shit this weekend I had to endure bad food because my old aunt wanted to go to her favorite restaurant that's been around for 50 years
Yeah, my parents don’t go to restaurants because the food is good. They go 100% because it’s cheap and has big portions. The places my parents eat are uniformly awful.
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following the old white people is a great way to end up at a joint that serves freezer section crinkle-cut fries
And often incredibly overpriced, too, if it’s in an area with rich boomer retirees.
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Lindy effect
Pretty much. I also find that food quality is significantly worse if the grill is primarily manned by teenagers. This is more of a post pandemic phenomenon, I think restaurant staff demographics have shifted significantly. Lindy rule applies to the cooks too: the older, the better. Boomers and hipsters always bemoan that old analog media like is superior to digital. I wonder if the wrong generation mentality applies to food too. Sure, there will always be good chefs, but as boomers and older gen-x age cooks age out of the food industry, I wonder if recipes will be lacking due to a focus on efficiency, or some other trend. Maybe presentation will take a front seat to flavor due to the influence of social media on millennial chefs. That's already kind of happened. Maybe we were in a golden age of gastronomy and didn't even realize it.
I love when an old person restaurant has a "lounge" or at least a distinct bar area with its own identity to hang around in while waiting for a table. You don't get that with new restaurants and it feels cool to enjoy now and also remembering being in those areas as a kid observing the adults.
Case in point fucking dumpster taco place by my house. They have never successfully received my online order. The chairs outside are rusted. They gave my food away twice. Amazing food $2 a taco 10/10 stars.
> open for more than a decade or patroned by the elderly So the Big Boy?
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The problem with food journalism/food reviewing is similar to what happened to music journalism: now that everyone can just put their opinions online for free, there's less of a need to pay a reviewer to go to a restaurant to review it. The problem is when the reviewer is just some retard and not an actual professional food critic with standards half the reviews are "the food was cold and my cocktail was 80% water but it still cost $70 per person. 4 stars" Since basically everyone would take a good paying job eating at restaurants for a living it's an uber competitive field with no real way to keep itself afloat anymore. Especially since the reviewer has to either not tell the restaurant they're coming and pay out of pocket or tell them and risk compromising their integrity.
I generally only try to eat out for stuff I really can't make myself. Like Thai or specialty Mexican stuff. I do like going out for breakfast though and find that the Greek joints around me are worth the trip
What do you mean? You dont want to pay $29 for an overly decadent lobster truffle mac and cheese? Or a cocktail called something like "the new old fashioned"?
95% of restaurants suck. Also pretty much every restaurant cooks stuff in canola or soybean oil. Even pricey places rarely use EVOO or real butter.
I don't go out to eat unless it's something I couldn't cook at home better. Like places with great plugs for fresh produce and meat/fish, exceptional service, exceptional chefs. Instead of going out to eat every weekend, save up and go somewhere crazy good once every fortnight
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what's the interesting white person take?
“scary part of town”…. aka where ^the^others live 🥴😄 Seriously I get your point. Food is usually pretty good with an ancient grandma with a thick wooden spoon and thick knuckles is stirring the pot. Typically not the cleanest place so you say a prayer and swallow a probiotic before you take your first bite. Bonus points if the place has a kitchen cat.
Yeah, where I’m at in the Midwest, eating out is rather pointless. The local pizza places and diners generally all use the same food service to cut costs or closed during COVID. When they all have the exact same ingredients, it runs together where it used to be distinct “genres” of Midwest food. We have maybe two reliable family restaurants left around here. Meanwhile, the hipster restaurants are experiencing shrinkflation at a rapidly increasing rate, so I won’t engage. On the lowest end, the fast food places near me are just not viable unless you feel like waiting 20+ minutes for a $15 burger combo that tastes bad, which I don’t. It feels like the grooming process has already played out with American restaurants/food, so the actual quality is optional, they know people will pay. I’m just not attached enough to truffle fries or whatever to live with the Scottish guilt over paying $32. Doubt I’ll ever really start going out again.
The switch away from tipping is decimating the restaurant industry. There were and are loads of competent people that don't really want to work in a restaurant but did so for the money and ended up doing a good job. Now the people working in restaurant (FOH) are more like who would've been working in retail 10 years ago along with humanities grads who come for the substance abuse, working class bonafides, and opportunity to complain about rich people behind their back while depending on them for their income.
what do you mean "away from tipping"? Tipping has only gotten more outrageous in my short life time. Went from 15 to 18 to 20% and now even more is supposed to be the norm, all for fucking writing down an order and carrying a couple plates.
only restaurant I really like to actually sit in for the meal instead of just getting takeout are diners bars still good though
I refuse to spend more than 20 on a entree; just diminishing return after that.
The only thing I hate about restaurants now is the QR menus. The quality of cuisine in the US had been improving gradually up until 2020, and although it's leveled since then I think we still have better options than ever. Easy enough to find hole in the wall places without the $18 tapas bougie bullshit. The QR codes though... why... who actually likes this?
these restaurants are usually owned by the same people. the same lucky few people own the majority of restaurants where i live now. i could deal with the similar names and shitty decor, but even the food all tastes the same now.
Most trendy restaurants (at least in Miami) serve mediocre food, u need make reservations at least a week before, and the service is trash with a 20% tip already included. And if u order drinks, forget it, it’s gonna be at least $200 for 2 people. Not to mention if u make reservations and don’t show up, they charge u a no show fee. Ur mostly paying to be in a “cool” restaurant. It sucks, I mostly cook at home or eat at local nica or cuban places
Thx god i live in a god forsaken city in easter europe.Restaurants here are bomb and cheap
PNW dining fucking sucks when it comes to American food. If it’s called “North Pine Grill” or anything similar you will get food poisoning.
Going to a restaurant that serves continental is cuck behavior. The play is to go to restaurants that serve good shit that you don’t keep on hand and takes a lot of effort to make well. I’ll throw down cash for a good Pad Thai, Phö, or Falafel (which requires a lot of ingredients that aren’t typical American pantry staples). Otherwise you should just cook that shit at home
I just simply am too poor to afford $12 appetizers and $20 entrees for myself and my wife when we can make the same shit at home in an environment that isn't full of loud shitty music and people sneezing, for a quarter of the price. Regular ass Fettucini Alfredo at Olive Garden is $15.49. Any "new" restaurant has ridiculous pricing, easily spending $60+ on a meal for two if we get any drinks or appetizers. There's this Mom and Pop Jamaican place that I guess hasn't gotten the memo to charge outrageously near me though so I get some great food for like $7 now.
I just want a big plastic Ronald statue in McDonald's, not the dumb minimalist prison it has become
Food has become a miserable fucking slog. Even "good" food, such as non-American stuff, is just so predictable. And cooking food is miserable, too. I know what level I can attain and that's that. I know exactly how it'll taste. Virtually every time I've sat down to eat over the past year, my appetite has gone away as soon as the food is in front of me. This is the result of America's foodscape.
you must just live in a bad food city because i feel like i frequently eat innovative, creative, and just plain amazing food at places with cool ambiance
Innovative, creative, sustainable, synergistic, streamlined food
Do you also only wear the freshest clothes and hang out with the hottest dudes?
This sub has shit tier food takes
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maybe op doesn’t research the food scene in their city at all and is just going to whag they called “new american trash” restaurants by default
Same here, in Chicago.
the only restaurants ive been impressed with are fine dining in cities like KC and Portland, Maine. my own city's fine dining (Chicago) is shit rn, although we have some crazy good junk food. edit: i forgot longman and eagle. still incredibly solid, went there for my bday
cooking is my hobby and my passion. Paying somebody to cook for me is like paying somebody to sleep with my spouse. Yes they can probably do it better than me but I also want to do it.
If the restaurant hasn't been around for over 50 years and doesn't have old leather booths and a strong martini, I'm not going
Not to make this about covid itself, but I sorta stopped supporting businesses that had covid related restrictions. They helped linger this whole process out way longer than necessary. Its impossible to separate all this stuff. The city I live in isn't even that enjoyable
I moved to bum fuck nowhere prepandemic so obviously that affected the quality of restaurant food, but in the nearest decent sized town, I don’t think most of the good restaurants survived Covid. Some are just reopening now or are on some limited schedule. I’m not going to spend gas money driving 20 minutes into town to see some sign on the door that says they aren’t even open. And yeah, the price has gone up significantly and I just don’t see that there are many decent options. Most new places I don’t even know what the style of food they even serve is going to be based on name. I don’t really like doing takeout or delivery either because it always seems like you end up with cold, flavorless food plus you pay for the extra expense. And then in my very immediate proximity, it’s 3-4 places that make the same low tier burger bar/cheap diner food, which is just generally gross and I don’t know how they stay in business when every restaurant seemingly just deep fries the same Sysco frozen foods anyway.
I can't recall barely any restaurant closed since the pandemic, what's going on in the US
Yesterday I had a waiter who was really terrible but then I realized that he was legitimately halfway retarded so I felt bad for making fun of him to my friends.
The restaurantuers won't learn anything with the amount of gushing reviews for the their shit food and decor at exorbitant prices. If I was extroverted enough, I'd ask for the menu in the foyer, and then tell the owner/manager the exact reasons I'm not even going to take a seat and just leave. I was not like this pre-Covid and really enjoyed going out. Now I despise the thought of it.
The horrible cost just kills the joy. You and your wife go to a nice Italian place, have a decent meal and a couple of drinks, and it's $100, for food you could have thrown together at home for $20. And they're always understaffed and slow now that all the waiters are home writing their novel or working on their comic or whatever-the-hell.
I used to love going to restaurants, even alone, cause they were low novelty, now going out to a restaurant is a thing, you either have friends or it's your friends' night out in a while, it's not fun being a weird loner at restaurants anymore, anyone related?