Category: Food

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The Decline of Restaurants: An Anecdotal Observation

[Note to self: add this to the Quantitative Philosophy Index when it posts]

Remember those times when eating at restaurants was fun? I had attributed this to a combination of not having to eat mom’s boiled vegetables and not possessing any financial knowledge of a restaurant’s expense. Childhood, in essence, was the best time to eat out at restaurants.

But now, it’s usually disappointing. And there are so many more dining options out there than what was available to me as a kid! There has to be more to it.

So I sat down and compiled an arbitrary list. Here goes:

Given that the experience quality is defined by 5 operators:

  1. (A) Base cost of restaurant food
  2. (B) How much I’m expected to tip
  3. (C) How good I am at cooking
  4. (D) Novelty of eating at a restaurant
  5. (E) Perceived quality of restaurant food

Then:

D+E-(A+B+C) = Quality of the experience.

As these are mostly relative measures, attempts at quantification prove difficult. This approach also fails to represent why restaurants were fun before but suck now. No – a timeline representation is needed for this one:

Now I’ll point out some observations having thought back through this timeline:

  • The novelty of eating at a restaurant started high as a child, then declined as an adult as I could make the personal choice any time I wanted. This trend continued until COVID lockdowns, when the option was taken away, peaking after places began to reopen, following a drop to prior levels.
  • The perceived quality of restaurant food again started high as a child, generally maintained its allure through adulthood, seemed even better when it was less available during lockdowns, then drastically collapsed thereafter, following the industry’s maladaption to post-COVID labor costs and all that it impacts along the way. American businesses never cut profits, so restaurants instead turned to lower quality ingredients and even less-skilled labor.
  • Also, to further counter rising business costs, restaurants raised prices, and very quickly indeed.
  • Then, restaurants and the dining culture turned to collective guilt and overhauled tipping expectations. The tip itself, based on a percent of the meal’s cost, shouldn’t change if the base meal’s cost is increasing to offset overhead. In theory, the workers would see a proportional increase in their compensation as a result. Yet now we’re expected to give them a greater percentage, out of our own pockets. I don’t need guilt added to my dining experience, nor an additional expense to further raise the final expected cost.
  • And all this might be tolerable if I didn’t know how to cook. But I do, and my standards are often higher.

That said, here’s a final observation to further drive home the point: All of these dynamic variables chronologically, mostly, intersected a couple years back, which I’ve visually represented as the “Approximate industry failure point”. This was the moment at which dining out became almost entirely non-viable for me.

Everyone will have their own version of the graph, and perhaps restaurants still make sense to some people. But unless either the quality and novelty of fine dining drastically increase, or costs go way down, I don’t see this industry as a cost-effective source of entertainment for the foreseeable future.

–Simon

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Gazpacho

This was really tasty. I had had cold soups before, but found them unsettling and unsatisfying. Soups shouldn’t be cold.

But I had cucumbers and tomatoes on hand. Why not give it a go? After all, I have Alton Brown now at my digital culinary disposal. Seemed like a good starting point. Here’s his recipe: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/gazpacho-recipe-1937573

With some slight modifications: powdered cumin, because Liz doesn’t much care for it. And serrano peppers instead of bell, because that’s what I had. But otherwise, it’s pretty true to the recipe.

Also the portions were a tad modest, so I’d increase it in the future. But I supplemented it with garlic bread and that did the trick. Will definitely try again when I have an overabundance of summer veggies.

–Simon

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Chickens Don’t Live in the Woods

How many times have we been told that human attention spans are getting shorter and they’re even shorter than that of a goldfish’s? I don’t know how that was calculated, but I’m guessing it’s one of those silly bits of “knowledge” that gets passed around, yet no one verifies. Like old glass being amorphous in nature, which is why farmhouses have ripply windows.

Maybe it’s getting harder to focus on a singular task, collectively. But where’s the reference point? I remain skeptical, but for the sake of entertaining the theory, I’ll give a potential example: hunting. Memories of my youth recall excitement with lots of game and running through brush after rabbits with my dad. Last time we went together, however, it ended with him picking mushrooms and me sifting through the fields identifying wild carrots. So maybe it’s true. Or maybe there just isn’t as much wild game anymore.

Whatever the case, a day in the woods now capitalizes on all nature has to offer. It is no longer an adventure with a singular objective. And as such, my father is now a mushroom forager.

There’s one in particular he seeks out: Chicken of the woods. Because, in his words, they’re edible and highly unlikely to be mistaken for any other type of mushroom (i.e. unlikely to be confused with a mushroom that causes catastrophic renal failure). Plus, there’s the coolness factor.

And his last excursion was very successful, so he brought some down. They’ve been in the freezer long enough for me to forget about them, but a recent freezer cleanout revealed the forgotten bounty. It was time to give them a try.

In their raw form, tossed into a saucier to dehydrate.
And a mild cheese bechemel.
And noodles.

And I must agree: it does resemble chicken meat, especially in texture. Flavor was mild, not so much like good chicken, but more like Tyson-brand cheap chicken. Worth the grab for a distracted mind when no squirrels are out. It might not be meat, but it’s still a good find. Thanks Dad!

–Simon

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Refrigerator Pickles: AKA, We Can Pickle That!

What do second stage ethanol fermentation and metabolic detoxification have in common?

Vinegar! Acetic acid. Good for excreting into the toilet and preserving produce. Except probably don’t use urine for the produce part. Too many other things in that for a good pickling medium.

Fortunately, it’s easier to just buy vinegar than to rely on the above in-home methods of production. And much easier than attempting the lactic acid route (though I’ll totally try that one day). But for now, it’s refrigerator pickles, sans-Orléan method. Standard grocery store vinegar for this one. Here’s the recipe I used:

  • 1 cup water
  • 1 1/3 cup white vinegar
  • 1/3 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 Tbsp. kosher salt

Seems a tad sweet, but I’ll give it a week to settle and adjust accordingly.

We have cucumbers (there’s an abundance from the garden right now and the kid wanted to make some after learning about it at summer camp), serrano peppers, and red onions. So far, the red onions are pretty good. One of the most ridiculously up-charged items to buy, by the way. More street tacos in the future!

We can, indeed pickle that.

–Simon