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"Are You Being Served?"


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In the Guardian Weekend Magazine for July 20th, Joanna Blythman, one of the UK’s best food writers, addresses the perennial question: Why does eating out in Britain cost so much? This is not a search for villains, but a considered survey of the various factors – including astronomical start-up costs, behind-the-scenes mass-production technology, and public ignorance and indifference – which make eating out in Britain an expensive game of Russian roulette in which most of the chambers are loaded.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4463970,00.html

John Whiting, London

Whitings Writings

Top Google/MSN hit for Paris Bistros

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Unfortunately,John, this hardly groundbreaking revelation is true in all cities where tourists or visitors on business make up a large proportion of the dining audience.

In London, Paris, NY, LA or a hundred others, the experience of eating out is a gamble. For every crappy experience at Mirabelle or GR's @C's in London, I have had a comparably bad meal at Jo Jo's or Spago's. All of these cost around the same. Too damn much.

Conran places are probably the worst offenders. I was speaking to a barman in Baltic last night who had worked at Pont De La Tour. He left when he found out ( or so he alleged ) that the service charge ( a whopping great 15%) did not go to the staff as a gratuity but was spent on the flowers for the restaurant, paying the pianist and providing staff meals.

I think that people are becoming more savvy. The fact that MPW is having problems, that Chez Gerrard ( new slogan "home of the smallest tables in town") and others are having to close restaurants shows that people are wising up. I hope.

The only way to deal with this is to never return to anywhere where you feel you have been ripped off.

S

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The amazing thing to me is that even at these incredible prices, it's pretty difficult for a restaurant to make any money.

One line caught my eye, because I didn't think the math made sense:

Nowadays, a chef is expected to make at least 70% profit on overall food costs. The typical rule of thumb for a mid-market restaurant is that if you buy the main protein element of a dish for £3, then you sell it for £10 and add another rounded-up £2 to make up for the 17.5% VAT that the government levies on your profit. All that takes the total cost of the dish to £12, which in the UK is considered a fairly reasonably priced main course.

A 70% profit would not get you from 3 to 10. That would be more like a 333% profit, wouldn't it?

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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Thats 70% GROSS profit.Net profit would work out about 10% after overheads wages etc etc.

and the quote about VAT being a levy on profit ,no VAT is a tax on turnover.Income tax is a tax on profit, or corporation tax if your a big boy

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Basildog, educate me: How does 70% profit -- net or gross -- ever get you from 3 to 10? If you add 70% of 3 to 3 you get a total of something like 5.3. Assuming that's a measure of gross profit, and the net profit is most certainly going to be less, how do you ever get to 10? If I had to guess, I'd say she's using profit and margin as synonyms, which as far as I know they are not.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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Gross profit of 70% means that 70% of the selling price is profit. 30% cost of ingrediants,17.5 % VAT wages 20%,Overheads 20% leaving 10% (ish) as net profit.These are rough figures, don,t ask me mine cos i don't know.I work on about 60% gross profit :biggrin: I think 70% is ripping people off

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I do not consider restaurant prices *intrinsically* unreasonable in London, Paris or New York. If a cuisinier provides appealing food (and, sadly, most do not), why should he not reap the financial benefits associated with his capabilities, just like an inspired architect or a skilled doctor? To me, the cost of ingredients is largely irrelevant, except to the extent their purchase cost for the restaurant would justify a *higher* price for the dish (e.g., caviar, truffles). As an aside, I also believe that wine prices and bottled water prices are not necessarily too high. A diner is not "forced" to purchase any particular bottle of wine or to purchase water. If he chooses to make such purchases, he should be prepared to pay what the restaurant has decided upon to maximize its profits.

I should note that, in the last decade or so at least and speaking very generally, many three-stars in Paris have not earned great returns, to put it gently. However, the overhead is very significant at the three-star level. A January 20, 1999 New York Times article ("Teetering at the Summit in France", by F Prial) noted:

"The fact is, starting up and running a three-star restaurant is astonishingly

expensive. Typically, such a restaurant has two employees for every customer

that its dining room can hold. And with France's heavy taxes [a significant factor], even dinner bills of $500 a person fail to cover costs. . . .

Mr. Ducasse divides France's luxury restaurants into three groups:

* Those that have been run by families for generations, like the Auberge de

l'Ill, owned and run by the Haeberlin family. Jean-Claude Vrinat, the owner of

Taillevent, in Paris, inherited the business from his father.

* Those run by restaurateurs like Mr. Ducasse and Mr. Loiseau who succeed by

engaging in many side activities.

* Those that survive with the help of strong backers. Alain Senderens, at

Lucas Carton in Paris . . . [Arrangement may have changed since the article?]"

The unfortunate aspect regarding high prices, for me, is when the cuisine is no commensurate with the prices. However, I believe I can tell the difference with respect to my subjective preferences and, while I might overpay a restaurant several times to sample poor cuisine, I will soon come to a subjective assessment it is overcharging and not visit absent special circumstances. As to prior indications that large segments of the dining population may not be able to tell the difference between good and poor cuisine and would therefore continue to be overcharged, they are free to pay whatever amounts they consider appropriate. :wink:

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Bear in mind that the purport of Joanna's article was not that good restaurants should not be expensive, but that expensive restaurants should be good. Also that *all* restaurants should not be expensive relative to their quality. In other words, that it is more difficult to get a decent meal reasonably in London than in most of Europe. I think that most people who have made the attempt would agree with this.

John Whiting, London

Whitings Writings

Top Google/MSN hit for Paris Bistros

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John -- While I agree that expensive restaurants should be good, could it be that many expensive restaurants *need* not as an economic and practical matter be, and are not, good because there are sufficient diners who cannot distinguish good from poor cuisine and the dining group as a whole therefore does not sufficiently "discipline" expensive restaurants having poor cusine? Note no connotations regarding diners in various countries were intended. :wink:

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Joanna's article is also being discussed on the Guild of Food Writers Sparklist. Richard, Earl of Bradford, proprietor of Porters in London, has given me permission to post his highly relevent comments:

Joanna Blythman rightly points out that until the British develop an 'eating out culture', then places out of London will always struggle to take enough money to pay the bills. You simply cannot survive on three busy trading sessions – Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday lunch – but then it is even worse in many areas, as people expect Sunday lunch to be cheaply priced. There’s also the effect of 17.5% VAT, which turns a £40 bill into £47, without any benefit to the restaurant.

There were far more pretentious restaurants around a few years back. The worst example near where we live was one in which they only served a five course menu at a fixed price. No wonder that they had no customers when we went there on a Thursday evening. At the time I asked the owner whether he would not rather charge per course and be doing some business instead of being empty? Six months later he wasn't there, and was replaced by somebody who took a far more practical attitude.

The British vote with their feet these days. Also they talk far more about where they have recently eaten out, so good and bad news gets around very quickly. They simply won't put up with what they might have done ten years ago.

Many of you must know Porters English Restaurant, http://www.porters.uk.com. We still maintain a policy of no cover charge, starters and puds are all £3.25, and most main courses are £8.95 including a choice of whatever side order you want. Surely that has to be described as reasonable? Especially for London, where my rent has gone in twenty three years from £25,000 to £175,000, with a review to come next year. A frightening prospect for us. Plus we have to cope with demonstrations, and Tube Strikes – the one this week cost us 65% of our trade on both Wednesday and Thursday, compared to the previous year.

And so we must take exception to some attitudes, like the man who ordered Beer Battered Cod and Chips, with a Side Salad, and when the bill came objected to paying extra for the salad – he said that the chips were not a side order as they were included in the title of the dish!

----------------

Outside London, the situation is improving steadily. For well over five years now I have been reviewing restaurants for The Express & Star of Wolverhampton, the second highest selling evening newspaper in England, after the Standard. It is an area not renowned for the quality of the places to eat out at; I therefore thought that it would be a short assignment!

Now there are more on my list to review than there have ever been. Part of that is the incredible increase in the number of good and decent restaurants in Birmingham, but the countryside is now dotted with them as well.

A contributing factor is that the big breweries have been selling off their estates, and individual operators, often chefs, have been taking them on. The Crown at Munslow near Much Wenlock is a recent example, where Richard Arnold, ex-Old Vicarage at Worfield, has bought it with his wife, whilst his predecessor John Williams started Sol in Shrewsbury.

These are not isolated examples of excellence. They are not expensive, not even for the wines – I noted for instance that the Jackson Estate Sauvignon Blanc was a very reasonable £15.50 at The Crown.

And so I take exception to the tarring of everywhere with the same brush. The service is often not incredibly skilled, but it is generally pleasant and friendly, and prices are sensible. Am I the only one seeing these changes? Come on – let’s have a little praise and help, with some recognition for what has been achieved, instead of the constant criticism that makes many restaurateurs wonder why they are bothering.

Richard Bradford

John Whiting, London

Whitings Writings

Top Google/MSN hit for Paris Bistros

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While I agree that expensive restaurants should be good, could it be that many expensive restaurants *need* not as an economic and practical matter be, and are not, good because there are sufficient diners who cannot distinguish good from poor cuisine and the dining group as a whole therefore does not sufficiently "discipline" expensive restaurants having poor cusine?

This is an example of what economists grandly call "information asymmetries"; less grandly, "the lemon problem", referring not to the fruit but to the sale of a bad used car.

Suppose that I am selling you a car. I know that something is seriously wrong with it, but I also know that this won't be obvious on your inspection. The sale will occur once and you and I will never trade again, so I have strong incentives to conceal this information from you.

(This is, of course, happening in the bizarre conceptual world of economics, where we assume that everyone is always as rapacious and opportunistic as they believe they can get away with. It's the world where you can never find a $1 bill on the street because someone else has spotted it first and picked it up. So mentally enter this world and continue...)

Equally, the buyer could have information advantages over the seller: I could buy life insurance, knowing that I have a terminal disease of which the insurance company was unaware.

Big information asymmetries are bad for both sellers and buyers. A seller who provides high quality products will be damaged, because buyers will be wary of paying too much for products that they suspect will be bad. Hence sellers of cheap, low quality products would crowd out the sellers of high quality products. If insurance companies could not ask for medical information, we could not buy insurance. Nobody would sell it.

Information problems are difficult because there is often no easy way to create enough "discipline" to overcome them. Even the very liquid capital markets haven't done this with complete effectiveness: CEOs and boards know a lot more than their shareholders about the real profitability of their firms, and we are seeing the outcomes in recent market instabilities.

We should not expect to be able to avoid information problems. They will always be with us. But there are mechanisms for getting around them. These include:

Guarantees. I could guarantee your car for some number of months.

Reputation. If I have a car shop, it may be less in my interest to cheat you, since you and others may want to trade with me again. If I am a larger car shop or a chain, this may signal to you that I have the financial strength to withstand a lawsuit.

Reputational investments. Some reckon that the total cost of a Harvard MBA, counting missed employment income, is something like $400,000. One reason people pay these sums is to set up a signal of their commitment and their investment in their own skill and productivity -- which could otherwise be hard for potential employers to assess before hiring them.

And there is regulation. Where buyers either have little choice or are unable to gain enough information to exercise their choices effectively, regulators step in. Examples here include a state restricting one's ability to practice medicine, or the onerous controls that apply to the sale of life insurance and savings products in the UK.

Expensive restaurants in touristic areas are good examples of information asymmetries. Restaurant guides are one way around these, although guides themselves are of uneven quality. Having a high profile chef is one way of signalling investment in quality, though again the diner on a given day has little way of knowing whether the chef is semi-retired, absent from the restaurant that day, "cashing in" on a previously earned reputation. In any event few restaurants nowadays seem to live long enough for them to build durable reputations.

Let's not forget that regulation might just have a role here. The French and Italian systems are more controlled than the UK or US systems, both in state or quasi-state organisations providing "star" ratings for restaurants and hotels, and in stricter controls on how you are allowed to describe products (the appellation controllée system). The Michelin system may be an important counteracting force to information problems.

Note that this does not apply quite as much at the very heights of the top end: a Keller or a Ducasse has a strong incentive to maintain a high level of quality, though equally he may have an incentive to focus this on people who can provide signals of his reputation -- VIPs and restaurant critics! Note also that I may have a stronger incentive to investigate, in advance, a meal where I am going to spend a lot of money.

The bigger problem is in the range where many of us look for good restaurants: in areas where we do not ordinarily live (and therefore cannot overcome information problems by being "insiders") and in the middle market.

A diner is not "forced" to purchase any particular bottle of wine or to purchase water. If he chooses to make such purchases, he should be prepared to pay what the restaurant has decided upon to maximize its profits. ... [if] large segments of the dining population may not be able to tell the difference between good and poor cuisine and would therefore continue to be overcharged, they are free to pay whatever amounts they consider appropriate.

I am certainly not calling for state control of restaurants! But if you went indefinitely down the road described in the last quote then the theory would predict severe trouble for the high quality middle market restaurants and practitioners of what, on another thread, people called "old dining". For many of us that would be a bad thing.

It would be interesting to speculate on things that could be done to "certify" middle market restaurants that had been given general approval in eGullet. Could we allow a restaurant to display a poll result, for example, in its front window?

For more on information asymmetries, see

(2001 Nobel prize announcement)

and

(1996 Nobel prize announcement)

Jonathan Day

"La cuisine, c'est quand les choses ont le go�t de ce qu'elles sont."

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Richard, Earl of Bradford, proprietor of Porters in London, has given me permission to post his highly relevent comments:
Many of you must know Porters English Restaurant, http://www.porters.uk.com. We still maintain a policy of no cover charge, starters and puds are all £3.25, and most main courses are £8.95 including a choice of whatever side order you want. Surely that has to be described as reasonable?

Richard Bradford

With all due respect to his lordship, with Zagat numbers of F13/D12/S13 Porters is on the high side of being reasonably priced as compared to the other London eateries "earning" similar numbers.

The Critical Diner

"If posts to eGullet became the yardstick of productivity, Tommy would be the ruler of the free world." -- Fat Guy

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I had better come clean, as John told me that he was putting my comments on the site, so I registered as 'Lord of the Pies'.

Zagat quotes us at £24, but with our prices it doesn't take a genius to work out that we would be delighted if all our customers spent that sort of money, especially as we also offer a two course and coffee menu at £10, at lunchtime and after 10 o'clock at night, and have a printable discount voucher on the website.

However, three courses and coffee, a la carte, would still come to under £17, so I honestly don't know how they come up with a figure of £24.

Perhaps people look at menu prices in London restaurants with such distrust that they then work out the cost per head on the basis that a meal will be about three times the price of a main course; not true in our case.

Richard Bradford

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This is an example of what economists grandly call "information asymmetries"; less grandly, "the lemon problem", referring not to the fruit but to the sale of a bad used car.

Suppose that I am selling you a car. I know that something is seriously wrong with it, but I also know that this won't be obvious on your inspection. The sale will occur once and you and I will never trade again, so I have strong incentives to conceal this information from you.

JD -- Exactly. Except that game theory would suggest that if I knew you might have a lemon .... ? It's a multiple-round game.

Note that the problem is more than one of information asymmetry. It is also a problem associated with there being, in my mind, no "objective" valuation of a car that might or might not be a "lemon" with respect to a particular buyer. It's as if buyers' utility functions were widely disparate, such that a car that certain buyers might consider to be non-lemon were a lemon for certain other buyer. For example, I would consider Taillevent and Gagnaire "lemons" among Paris three-stars, whereas for other diners, that might be their favorite restaurant based on their subjective preferences.

Note also that the paradigmatic lemon problem concerns one seller/buyer combination, with no repeated interactions over time between such parties (let alone information exchange with other parties). Unlike the lemon problem, (1) a particular diner can use her own past experiences and might know that a particular restaurant is a "lemon" and still be unable to unilaterally "discipline" a restaurant, and (2) the same "product" (i.e., the lemon) can be sold to multiple buyers (e.g., if one views different meals as essentially the same product). :wink: Returning to point (1), in other words, even if Diner A knows after the fact that Restaurant G is a "lemon", Diner B presumably does not because he has not yet eaten at the restaurant (or believes that cuisine is subjective and needs to make the evaluation for himself) or does not understand the difference. Thus, even after the purchase of the "lemon", Diner A is unable to discipline Restaurant G to force it to accept lower prices for its "lemon" products. The classical lemon problem involves a problem that all parties recognize, if they had the information, to be defective. Alas, restaurants are not such creatures. :hmmm:

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Cabrales, on some issues we're probably in closer agreement than it may seem.

My point about non-touristic areas was that multiple-round games are then possible. I can get to know a restaurant, and I can make contact with locals who know it. They can get to know me as I make repeated visits. Each of us has fewer incentives to act opportunistically.

(Can a restaurant patron behave opportunistically? I think so: she could demand special favours or make false promises of future business. Or make reservations which she fails to honour.)

This is why I always prefer to limit my travels to a single area -- to go to one place for a week, ideally more than one, and get to know the restaurants well, in part by speaking with local residents.

Isn't the newer work on information asymmetries, especially the Akerlof/Spence/Stiglitz contributions, all about extending the simple models to allow for signalling (information exchange) even in cases of single rounds? Perhaps the question is then (1) how a restaurateur could signal his positive intent; (2) how a diner who was not obviously a restaurant critic or a celebrity could signal her interest in and knowledge of good food so as to get the restaurateur to put its best foot forward.

The latter question is very interesting, from a practical standpoint. In Ruhlman's account of the French Laundry, dining alone was enough to get a table treated as "VIP" ... I wonder whether this is still true? Other signalling methods could include speaking the local language, ordering an interesting or rare wine, etc. The Michelin guide says: "Your recommendation will be self-evident if you walk into a hotel with the guide in hand." I have sometimes succeeded in engaging a waiter or the chef in discussion about the quality of a dish I have just tasted. This can backfire, though!

Of course if there are completely disparate objective functions then the game is over: the only thing I can do is to randomly visit restaurants until I hit on some that I like, and then return to those.

Fortunately I believe there is sufficient congruence in objective functions that -- without having to believe in some sort of Platonic hierarchy of cuisine -- we can compare each other's tastes and exchange information. You don't like Taillevent or Gagnaire. But I can go back and read your thoughtful posts and understand why you reached that point of view, and try to decide whether I would experience them in the same way.

This is why I strugggle with criticism that simply says "I liked this dish and I didn't like that one." It doesn't help me make up my mind. Much more useful is an analysis on the lines of "If you liked Arpège, you will like L'Ambroisie."

Jonathan Day

"La cuisine, c'est quand les choses ont le go�t de ce qu'elles sont."

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Of course if there are completely disparate objective functions then the game is over: the only thing I can do is to randomly visit restaurants until I hit on some that I like, and then return to those.

JD -- Partially disparate objective functions do correspond to my beliefs. A significant (not the only significant) objective as I dined out was to identify and callibrate the restaurants that subjectively suited my preferences. When one finds a restaurant that is ideal for oneself, it is a special accomplishment. :laugh: I am content with the restaurants I have identified, and I visit other restaurants mostly out of curiosity (when the ones I have identified are not geographically accessible) or when I am geographically distant from preferred restaurants.

I do acknowledge that a three-star rating tends to suggest a restaurant that has a higher likelihood of being appropriate cuisine-wise than a two-star. So there are certain more "objective" parameters.

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a three-star rating tends to suggest a restaurant that has a higher likelihood of being appropriate cuisine-wise than a two-star.

I continue to wonder about the role of regulation and certification in improving the general quality of restaurant cuisine in a country.

France appears to have a more active "industry" (Michelin, Gault Millau, Gantié, Bouche-à-Oreille, Meilleur Ouvrier de France, etc.) for rating restaurants and chefs than does the UK or US. Is this true? And if so, does it make a difference?

Cabrales (or any other member): are you more inclined to choose a restaurant based on awards that its chef has won? In the US, does the "CMC" (certified master chef) award have an effect in attracting custom?

Jonathan Day

"La cuisine, c'est quand les choses ont le go�t de ce qu'elles sont."

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Cabrales (or any other member): are you more inclined to choose a restaurant based on awards that its chef has won? In the US, does the "CMC" (certified master chef) award have an effect in attracting custom?

JD -- If I have never visited a restaurant, I adhere to Michelin ratings to determine which restaurants I will allocate time to visit. I engage in research (eGullet, French guides, French articles, review of a restaurant's website, including any indicative menus) with respect to alternative restaurants to visit. Note I have a soft spot (separate from cuisine-driven considerations, with no negative connotations with respect to quality of cuisine) for restaurants in France with history (e.g., L'Oustau de Baumaniere, L'Oasis, Drouant, Le Moulin de Mougins, 59 Poincare and Maxim's, none of which I have visited). Once I have visited a restaurant, my subjective assessments become the only relevant basis for evaluation, to be updated with subsequent visits. Michelin three or two star status is relevant to me. I have most other French guides, but do not place significant reliance on them. I place no reliance on MOF (Meuilleur Ouvrier de France, spelling) or other awards.

In the US, I place no value on awards a chef might have won. In NY and a few other cities, I have a sufficient understanding of the range of restaurants to make decisions independent of a chef's accolades. I sometimes use the NYT Guide to NYC Restaurants, but more as a general reference after I have decided on a restaurant to visit. Note, with all respect to US restaurants, that I subjectively consider the general level of cuisine in the US to be below the level in France, and thus have fewer incentives to allocate time to researching restaurants, etc. For new restaurants, I sometimes look at a site recommended by a friend -- it's the site affiliated with the New York magazine (not New Yorker). I also have subscriptions to many US and French food publications, and receive some information through them. I do not feel the need to be among the first to visit new restaurants in New York because I do not generally expect them to be as promising as new restaurants in France. :blink:

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I find articles like these terribly boring. It is the ultimate comparison of apples and oranges and in the end it is nothing but sensationalism about the money aspect of dining. I always think of restaurants as working in reverse of this article. Somebody wants to open a restaurant and they decide they want it to appeal to diners who are willing to spend $100 a head on dinner and then they figure out what they have to do to get there. Laymen always like to talk about these things in reverse. But if they were to evaluate them the way restauranteurs and businessmen do, they would have to write articles for business journals and not the Guardian.

Fact of the matter is that when Philip Howard opens The Square, he calculates how much per dinner served he can charge. It's the most important calculation he can make because he wants his restaurant full, but of the right people. Posh West End businessman do not want to be eating their meals next to punters from the boonies at the next table. And everything about the place is calculated towards meeting that goal. From the decor to the price of an entree to what is on the wine list and how it is marked up. But by contrast, he has created a completetly different envirnoment at La Trompette because the clientele has switched from international businessmen to more of a local clientele. And in a place that serves pretty much the same food as The Square, albeit a simplified version, the average dinner bill will be significantly less.

To compare a meal at a top place in greater London to Asti is ludicrous. It's like saying that a 5 million pound home on Cadogan Gardens would cost 500,000 pounds in Asti. That would be a great deal other than the fact that every morning when you woke up you would be in Asti. So from here on in, the answer to why restaurants are so expensive these days is that people are willing to pay for an experience that offers a sense of exclusivity.

As for why restaurants do such a poor job? Well that's another thing and I wish people didn't always co-mingle money and performence. Expensive restaurants do not have an exclusive on mediocrity. The fact of the matter is that medocrity exists at all levels and it ensues because people put up with it. But then again, I just told you that most people eat out for the experience and not because of the food so why shouldn't that be the case?

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In the Guardian Weekend Magazine for July 20th, Joanna Blythman, one of the UK’s best food writers...

Well, she may be, but in that case why doesn't she stick to writing about food instead of making it abundantly clear that she knows nothing about running a business, or accounting, or marketing ?

... a considered survey of the various factors – including astronomical start-up costs, behind-the-scenes mass-production technology, and public ignorance and indifference – which make eating out in Britain an expensive game of Russian roulette in which most of the chambers are loaded

I've read the piece with care, and can find no reference of any sort to publicc ignorance or indifference, and certainly nothing to justify the florid phraseologically florid tailpiece of the above quote.

Actually, I found the whole piece rather forced, as though she had cribbed bits of it from here and there and cobbled it together, and surprisingly naive.

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