Faux Fine Dining Hate Thread - $20 for a taco

[Black Man Underwear]

I fucking hate restaurants that cost eyewatering amounts for low quality food and service.

Here is an abridged list of shit they pull:

• $40 for the wrong cut of steak cooked entirely wrong. I can make it better for $20 at home.
• Premium dessert is a banana split in a plastic cup. Nothing special but the price.
• $20 for a taco. One. It wasn't even good.
• Literal cheese puffs as appetizers. The cheap ones out of the plastic barrel.
• A fucking ham sandwich on white bread with cheddar.
• 4 hour delay for a family dinner booked two weeks earlier.
• Company dinner reservations being moved by an hour in the middle of the meal because the other half wasn't prepared yet.

These places are banking on you being retarded enough to go there. Any time contraints are purely because half of the staff are illegals.

If you can't make it fine dining, don't make a fine dining restaurant.

The best restaurants I have eaten at charge the lowest prices for food. Locally owned places that serve burgers and fries for $10 are the way to go. As far as I've experienced they will never try to fuck you. I almost automatically look down on higher class dining because it's invariably exaggerated and the chef is an illegal from Guatamala.

 

[David Brown]

I have never heard of or witnessed anything even remotely close to the scenarios you are describing, where the hell are you OP?
Thread tax: all fast food at this point. It used to be cheap and shitty and now it's just shitty.
Edit: oh you said fine dining. I got nothing. but I'm really curious to know what restaurants you went to that did any of that insane shit you mentioned

 

[beautiful person]

$20 for a taco. One. It wasn't even good.

There's a place in my town that does this shit. They use super pretentious ingredients in their tacos, too. Tacos are supposed to be humble and cheap and made by Mexicans, not hipsters. I think their other "selling point" is that they serve wine with their tacos.

 

[Kiska]

Here is an abridged list of shit they pull:

All of these are the types of restaurants you'll find in super-progressive leftist city centers. I actually have been thinking for a while about how much of this gig is done by corporations masquerading as local businesses since many of them build the same cookie cutter buildings and standardize all of their stuff to the same extent that quick service restaurant franchises do (similar to how ghost kitchens are ran by).

First you have to pay to park on the side of the road and hope your car doesn't get its windows smashed like it does every other time you visit downtown. You enter the building, it either looks like a Hyatt Hotel or it looks like an eldritch monstrosity of exposed brick walls and hollowed out ceilings

The negro xhe/xir with a pronoun pin hands you a Temuther-bound menu full of ridiculously overpriced Socal Mex dishes

You glance through the menu and get the one somewhat normal looking item, a taco plate that costs $32. You wait 30 minutes and finally you get the damn thing served on a rack of bent steel, the tortilla is literally uncooked and it tastes more like a chicken salad than it does a taco.

Once you get up and leave you then get the barrage of tips and whatnot.

Anyway it's a genuinely retarded concept to bait hippie scum, but like any good businessman would, I respect the grift.

 

[Black Man Underwear]

All of these are the types of restaurants you'll find in super-progressive leftist city centers. I actually have been thinking for a while about how much of this gig is done by corporations masquerading as local businesses since many of them build the same cookie cutter buildings and standardize all of their stuff to the same extent that quick service restaurant franchises do (similar to how ghost kitchens are ran by).

First you have to pay to park on the side of the road and hope your car doesn't get its windows smashed like it does every other time you visit downtown. You enter the building, it either looks like a Hyatt Hotel or it looks like an eldritch monstrosity of exposed brick walls and hollowed out ceilings
View attachment 7616539
The negro xhe/xir with a pronoun pin hands you a Temuther-bound menu full of ridiculously overpriced Socal Mex dishes
View attachment 7616535
You glance through the menu and get the one somewhat normal looking item, a taco plate that costs $32. You wait 30 minutes and finally you get the damn thing served on a rack of bent steel, the tortilla is literally uncooked and it tastes more like a chicken salad than it does a taco.
View attachment 7616486
Once you get up and leave you then get the barrage of tips and whatnot.

Anyway it's a genuinely retarded concept to bait hippie scum, but like any good businessman would, I respect the grift.

The trouble is I've seen this in classier places too. Places with paintings and bottled ships on the wall and boomers with money to spend packed in. Usually recently opened and soon to close, but in higher income areas. It's almost insulting how you sit down prepared for high prices but good food and instead get McDonald's quality for $50 a plate.

Talking to a few old fucks who frequent more established fine dining chains I got to know even they have decreased in quality. I've heard the really good steakhouses, places with Michelin stars might cut back on portions or serve more potatoes etc. because it's too expensive.

 

[TooManyKittens]

The trouble is I've seen this in classier places too. Places with paintings and bottled ships on the wall and boomers with money to spend packed in. Usually recently opened and soon to close, but in higher income areas. It's almost insulting how you sit down prepared for high prices but good food and instead get McDonald's quality for $50 a plate.

Talking to a few old fucks who frequent more established fine dining chains I got to know even they have decreased in quality. I've heard the really good steakhouses, places with Michelin stars might cut back on portions or serve more potatoes etc. because it's too expensive.

Where I am some of the diners have even gotten to be expensive and not even the good kind of cheap food. It's mostly horrifying imo I can get a better meal for cheaper at non diner. It does seem to be city centric though. Get out to the country and it'll be cheap and either amazing or terrible and the locals will know.

There's a handful of restaurants I consider worth an expensive meal and that list has only gotten shorter over the years as various establishments cheap out on everything and raise prices. Like I know restaurants can be thin margins but at some point you've just lost the plot entirely.

Fast food generally isn't fast or cheap and isn't even edible anymore. (It was never good or good for you).

It doesn't even take a lot of cooking skill to come up with a better meal than a lot of restaurants these days and people wonder why everyone is eating at home.

 

[Town Drunk]

I haven't witnessed any of this shit peronally but I know it exists. Fine dining has become a joke.

"We serve your food deconstructed!" So I have to assemble my meal myself?

Reminds me of the Penn and Teller episode where they served TV dinners to people but used fancy language, like this beef is raised on an all alfafla diet, and the potatos are an heirloum varity only raised in eastern Oregon, and the people nodded and said how good it was.

If you want to see a movie taking the piss on this, and is actually good. I recommend "The Menu"

 

[BootlegPopeye]

Not quite fine dining, but Five Guys Burgers and Fries pioneered the concept of overcharging for what is barely better than typical fast food slop. I remember going there once (and only once) with a relative and even though we didn't get anything big, between the two of us it was nearly 40 dollars for rather average food. Never again.

 

[The Crack Spiders Bitch]

Australia is still suffering from the overpriced burger thing.

Sit down restaurant, kitsch/kooky decor, they/them waitstaff and Pajeet cooks,
$35 burgers that taste like Hungry Jacks (so Whataburger for you Seppos), chips are extra, and the only drinks they sell are these:

 

[itogi]

There was a story from 2015 about a restaurant at the Rosa Khutor ski resort that had a 12-times upsell on a cut-up plombir ice cream.


You don't hate faux fine dining enough.

 

[mindlessobserver]

People bitching about prices at fine dining? My brothers in christ it costs 4 fucking dollars for a hot dog at a gas station. And they want another 3 dollars for the soda!

7 dollars for a gas station sausage and corn sugar water. And may the lord strike me down for this blasphemy if you want a bag of chips to go with it, you gas station lunch will cost double digits.

Truly the end of days.

 

[Black Man Underwear]

People bitching about prices at fine dining? My brothers in christ it costs 4 fucking dollars for a hot dog at a gas station. And they want another 3 dollars for the soda!

7 dollars for a gas station sausage and corn sugar water. And may the lord strike me down for this blasphemy if you want a bag of chips to go with it, you gas station lunch will cost double digits.

Truly the end of days.

It's not the price. It's that it's not fine dining. $500 for a sit down meal and you're served food on par with TV dinners.

I'm at my wits end. What do I have to pay to be served actual food? What special network do I need to be in to get a steak done right at a restaurant, or do I have to cook everything myself?

If corporate booked a big restaurant and it felt like a front for the cartel with cheap fake decor and cheap yogurt served in plastic cups you'd be livid.

Everything is false advertising and I'm just done eating out.

 

[mindlessobserver]

It's not the price. It's that it's not fine dining. $500 for a sit down meal and you're served food on par with TV dinners.

Fine dining is a meme and always has been. There is no appreciable difference between a 500 dollar entree and a 50 dollar entree beyond presentation and branding.

Its an industry to give bored rich people a way to spend money they dont care about. Its why a 14 dollar bottle of gas station wine can beat a 400 dollar bottle of bespoke single origin bullshit in a blind taste test and yet if you tell the testers the price ahead of time the 400 dollar bottle always wins.

Its all in your head and always has been.

And yes dinner absolutely was a Gas station hot dog and a bottle of barefoot.

 

[Breadbassket]

As absurd as it is I can almost respect the sheer gall required to serve cheese puffs as an appetizer for a "fine dining" experience.

 

[Black Man Underwear]

As absurd as it is I can almost respect the sheer gall required to serve cheese puffs as an appetizer for a "fine dining" experience.

When I say cheese puffs I literally mean this.

Fine dining is a meme and always has been. There is no appreciable difference between a 500 dollar entree and a 50 dollar entree beyond presentation and branding.

Its an industry to give bored rich people a way to spend money they dont care about. Its why a 14 dollar bottle of gas station wine can beat a 400 dollar bottle of bespoke single origin bullshit in a blind taste test and yet if you tell the testers the price ahead of time the 400 dollar bottle always wins.

Its all in your head and always has been.

And yes dinner absolutely was a Gas station hot dog and a bottle of barefoot.

I wish that was it but it has absolutely nothing to do with wine. I have been served insulting food virtually any time I get to go to fine dining restaurants. Frankly I'm disappointed every time, I expect Gordon Ramsay and I'm left wondering why there's hair in my food and I have a rancid taste in my mouth. I invariably don't finish it because corporate is paying and I go out for burgers.

My only logical conclusion is this: real fine dining is unaffordable or unknown for common people so we have 3 classes that came to be,

1. Hippie new age $20 tacos
2. Boomer date night to milk the elderly
3. 3x Michelin starred but hard to come by

1 is designed to milk retarded 30 something web developers with money to burn.
2 is designed to milk the elderly with malfunctioning taste buds.
3 is designed as an experience for those with actual wealth.

Their prices are usually similar so telling the difference requires strategy.

Buying high priced food in America today is like a meeting with HR. They're being extra nice to you because they hate you, their decor highlights their insecurities, the perfume masks the scent of rotting meat, and you're not leaving happy unless you're a brainlet who takes everything at face value.

 

[ZipDisk]

Where I live all the restaurants have the floor plan of a strip mall subway sandwich shop and ludicrous pricing. I don't get it.

Like you can't call yourself fine dining with that layout.

Penn & Teller did gourmet water. They filled all the bottles with a hose.

 

[Dagoth AMOGUS]

This is one of those threads I never thought we needed but I am so glad someone said something.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Biggest restaurant red flag is the desert menu, a majority of dessert menus are just items bought straight from catering companies and you can usually tell.

 

[General Disarray]

Wisconsin has a solution: the supper club. Have a couple of Old Fashioneds while you wait for your food, and you won't even notice if it's subpar. I've always had a perfectly acceptable meal at a decent price at a supper club but tbh it's been a while.

 

[User names must be unique]

-I hate when I order a burger and it's a foot tall.
-I hate when restaurants have one beer and it's an overpriced bottle of Anheuser-busch piss.
-I hate when i order a pate/toast starter and you get a giant portion of pate and 2 tiny slices of toast.