I avoid restaurants entirely since they cost a lot of money and demand as much or more effort than cooking something to eat at home. It's that simple. The prices are sky-high -- and have to be. What you're paying for in a restaurant is food service. If you want to do this to stimulate the economy and you're feeling altruistic, then go out to the cheapest restaurants you can find so that you will reach workers who live below minimum wage and give them a decent tip. If you're feeling that altruistic, just order coffee or a dessert but give your waiter or waitress a large tip if you'd ordered dinner.
They live on those tips. They get paid much less than minimum wage in most restaurants because the average tips for that restaurant are factored into their wages. They work a difficult, gruelling and often humiliating job for which they often get mistreated and then stiffed by the same people who mistreated them. The best waitstaff manage nonetheless to care about other people's comfort.
A great many instead are just pasting on a smile and trying to get through the night. They're going nuts running back and forth, they usually don't get a moment to breathe. Others, in many expensive restaurants, are snobs who get to take it out on the customers and get back at them
Meanwhile you go in and sit down, often in extremely uncomfortable furnishings, surrounded by a lot of people you don't know in an atmosphere where they're assumed to be judging you on your posture, clothing and status. You wait, and wait some more. If you're alone this gets stifling fast. If not, then you're making awkward conversation with whoever you're with because being in public, you can't really talk about anything too personal.
The time and gas to get there, the time it takes for your meal to be prepared, then results in something standardized for the restaurant's idea of what's good. Not your personal palate. Not your individual tastes. The chef's and the owner's. Portions are measured and you can't get seconds, it's like being put on a diet as soon as you walk in and pay that outrageous markup -- which isn't outrageous because it's all for labor.
When you cook at home you can afford to be generous. On the same budget for an average restaurant meal, you could eat for a week and have plenty of luxury items. You're also cooking food to your own tastes, food sensitivities, allergies and dislikes. Hate Worcester sauce? Don't use it. Find something else to add a flavor. Love garlic? Put more of it in.
At home you do it your own way and can nibble while you're cooking to see if you got it right. Or have a snack while waiting. Some meals take very little physical effort. Oddly enough, roasting a turkey is one of those for the immense amount of food resulting -- even with the trimmings it comes out a whole lot cheaper and fills the fridge with tasty leftovers for days.
Instead of your putting the leftovers in a bag to take home, if any, then seeing the crowd at the place look down at you for your frugality.
If you eat at expensive restaurants, the service can get real nasty at times unless you exactly fit their type of person. The very best, that isn't true. Go someplace where one night's meal for two would pay for enough good food for a month and there you'll find staff who will treat you like a king even if you came in with paint splashed jeans and scruffy long hair looking obviously like the street artist you are. I did eat at a couple of the very best restaurants in New Orleans and find good food and good service and in one of them, physical comfort at the same time.
It was a rarity and it was because someone else took me to dinner. The cost of one meal was more generous than my entire grocery bill for a month. It was a good meal. I will grant you that. But is it sane to spend a month's money on one meal that's gone the moment you ate it? Maybe once to know what that's like, or to celebrate something spectacular like the sale of your first novel or getting married or something.
The costs of restaurants and the shabby way that people get treated in them most of the time are both natural consequences of what the restaurant industry is. It does employ a lot of people who don't necessarily have either vocational training or college -- unless it's the expensive ones, where they definitely need that in food service and cooking. But employees are the highest overhead cost for any business.
If you want to save money on food, you can get the best by getting the closest to the source. You can also save the environment by doing so, less travel means less pollution and you can avoid the worst animal cruelty abuses by getting a huge Energy Star freezer then dealing with a local farmer or rancher for your meat.
Doing that, you'll get the best cuts and you can have it customized.
There is a little known detail about slaughterhouses and animal cruelty to keep in mind too. I didn't get to test this till our family got the big energy-efficient sarcophagus freezer and got the big meat deal from the rancher.
Animals that die in prolonged pain and terror don't taste as good. The chemistry of fear produces a taint in the meat. It sours it and flattens the flavor. Animals slaughtered on a farm aren't expecting it -- the same people who handled them every day and took good care of them will kill humanely and fast, then clean up neatly and the other pigs or cows or turkeys have no idea what just happened to one of them. Compassion would say it's better to kill fast with less pain, to have mercy and respect for your prey. It was a pleasant surprise to discover that compassion also carries a real benefit in terms of the quality and flavor of the meat.
The disproportionate cost of what seems like a convenience can wind up destroying a budget. Consider that most people who eat at restaurants will use credit cards. Then look at what happens at the end of the month if any unexpected expenses come up, like medical expenses.
They make the minimum payment and juggle all the bills, squeak by that month with relief that at least their pay covered the emergency. The interest starts to creep up. By then the habit of eating at restaurants has set in so they're going on using their credit cards. I saw this a lot in the 1980s, at the point Reaganomics was assuring everyone that greed was a good thing and easy credit was possible for everyone.
I also went bankrupt in the 1980s on maxed out credit cards while working the best paid job I ever had in my life -- definitely a good job, $35k a year back in the 1980s would be well over $50k now, maybe more. Yet I could not manage to save up for a car, could not manage to afford decent furniture, wound up short every month and the worst offender, beyond even binge spending, was eating out with a then-spouse who loved eating out. We ate in a wide variety of restaurants. If we were short one week then it'd be a cheaper restaurant to save money -- not eating at home where the proportion of money saved is huge.
If all these inconveniences about restaurants don't deter you, then stop and think of this. Eating out is a luxury. It's not needed, it's not even important to survival. It's important to feeling good and feeling like you have high status, an emotional pleasure that is an experience rather than a tangible object to clutter your home with junk.
So if that's what it is and all my reasons for disliking restaurants don't persuade you -- then why do you bother with low end ones? Why not save up and treat that as a real treat and go somewhere like Brennan's in New Orleans, treat it like a weekend vacation in the middle of the year and make a big deal of it? Get all dressed up as if someone was getting married. Reserve your evening well in advance and make it a romantic big deal with your significant other.
Save up for it before you go.
Don't put it on your credit card unless you mean to clear that card completely on the next payment and have the means.
That's still living dangerously because you may have the money budgeted and still have an unexpected expense. However, you could always get cash, use large bills and leave a splendid tip as part of the spectacular night to support the doubtless impeccable service you truly get at five star restaurants.
That is one important difference between four star and five star restaurants, according to my European-traveled daughter. Four star has a high reputation and good food but may also be doing something weird and trendy that doesn't necessarily taste good or have good portions. Waiters and sommeliers may be snobby. Five star, the very best restaurants, will have staff who make you feel like visiting royalty and both waitstaff and sommelier (wine expert) will be guiding you to an experience that can teach you something good about food.
That's why I'd say save up for it and go to the very best, because then you can learn something that night to bring home all year. Some wines do combine with certain foods in spectacular ways. The highest finest restaurants know what some wonderful combinations are, their expertise is legendary and real. So you can learn things in a night at a good restaurant that would enrich your choices later when you're just shopping at the organic food market and buying your own wine by the bottle rather than the glass.
It's the apparently cheap middle of the road restaurants that'll get you -- they become habitual and that mounts up to a level that most binges can't compare. Because it is a habit. The people in the rest of the place become like distant coworkers or something, "getting out" becomes routine and it's no longer special -- but you pay special prices for all that.
It's possible for a Welfare recipient to afford butter and steaks on Food Stamps provided they don't bother with breakfast cereal and prepackaged instant meals. Scale that up to restaurants and the ones that are worthwhile are the ones that would take the whole Welfare check -- as a learning experience.
So when you're analyzing your expenses and wondering how to tighten your belt without cutting out luxury -- chop the frequency of restaurant eating and you'll get dramatic results. Probably enough budget left that you don't need to drop cable TV (usually cost effective since it gives people something to do staying in) or can afford sports equipment or something real that gives long term pleasure.
There's nothing wrong with having some luxury in life. Happily, most Americans who actually have jobs can afford luxury as well as necessity. The happiest life comes when you understand which is which, what you enjoy most and budget your luxuries and necessities for maximum return on the dollar.
Naturally that puts hobbies that pay for themselves on top of the priority list and eating out at the bottom -- unless you do have some specific reason for eating out more often that has to do with your personal tastes, a favorite restaurant where you do get good service and a budget that you can afford that. Know what you're giving up in order to keep that favorite restaurant habit. Consider going less often but still enjoying it.
Frugality, environmental reasons, quality and cost all come into it -- only the best restaurants seem to be worth the money and those are something better enjoyed as an annual vacation than an everyday routine.
