Food High End Restaurants and Small Portions

^^^ bit like Good Pigs' Cheek

... definitely OK with tiny portions if That were on the agenda.

 

Back to the original question - are serving sizes too small in these types of restaurants. No, I don't think so. A lot of the time the food is super rich (lots of butter and cream etc.). Giving the customer huge amounts of this stuff is just asking for people to be ill. You don't necessarily come out stuffed, but you really shouldn't be hungry.

Having said that, fine dining does not equal "all you can eat buffet". Homer Simpson would come out hungry, but maybe he isn't the target market...

 

What the hell is a 22 year old doing spending $7,000-15,000 per month on food and entertainment? That's more than most peoples' salaries.

 

No, the numbers you guys read were right.

Those expenditures do fall under the company expenses account, but it's more of a formality than anything else.

You'd be surprised how much a higher-end night out for 2-5 people can cost in cities such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, München and - the absolute king - Dubai.

 

Small portion sizes, to my understanding, are part and parcel of French dining; but the reason for this is supposed to be a larger number of courses than we are accustomed to in the US. One of my friends, who is a frequent visitor to France, and a bit of a foodie, says that she finds it typical at decent restaurants (outside of Paris, anyway, which is apparently geared toward tourists) to expect fresh bread; olives and other country pickles, preserves, or pates; salad or small vegetable dishes; an appetizer course; soup or a fish course; at least one entree and side dishes; a dessert; a cheese course; all accompanied by wines.

Of course, it's also typical, she tells me, that at countryside restraurants in France, all of this is frequently to be had for the equivalent in euros of around 1/2 to 2/3 the price of dinner at an upscale power restaurant in New York or LA or London....

 

You could always find a place that does a degustation menu. I really want to try this place, but there are others you can do in Sydney:

http://simonfoodfavourites.blogspot.com/2010/07/tetsuyas-my-first-3-hatted-degustation.html

My wife and I did lunch at Berowra Waters Inn for my birthday a couple of years ago. five courses with matching wines - I could hardly walk when I was done -yum
http://www.berowrawatersinn.com/berowrawatersinn/Home.html

 

Oh, Tetsuya's! I read Simon's article on it a while ago and have been wanting to go there.

Bummed the hell out of me when I didn't manage to in my latest trip to Sydney 3 months ago.

Do let me know how your experience there was, please!

FYI, the Aria restaurant in Sydney does a degustation menu. I think the price of it incl. matching wines is A$ 230.

EDIT: Ah, I was wrong. It's A$ 260 per person: http://www.ariarestaurant.com/default.asp?action=article&ID=21617

 

Now, that all makes sense. Thanks, Levite.

I can see using smaller portions if you're having several courses, but that's not usually the case for a night out on the town in New York and the like, right?

 

the sad part is the highest end restraunt ive ever been to is longhorns or outback. something like that. i have a hard time paying a hundered dollars a head (or what ever it is) to eat.

 

Wedge salad...chunk of cheap lettuce !!
Another cheap salad is Caesar, basically a bunch of Romaine lettuce, but, it does have a nice dressing and should have shaved parm. cheese.
P and I mostly cook at home, we enjoy doing it together, we will eat out foods that we can't or don't want to bother with (Pad Thai, Sushi, etc) or take too many ingreedents we don't have on hand...
Most upper priced restaurants are too expensive for what you get, a $40 steaks at a steak house...that we buy at Costco, marinate and grill, with a baked potato, and a salad of mixed greens with homemade dressing ( total cost $20 for the 2 of us and wine that we buy for $25 that is $50-60 out), and no tipping or tax!
And, finally Americans eat too much anyway, that's why we are ALL fat.
Look around at places like Disney, OMG .....we are PORKERS...and, we have exported all the worst to Europe, they are geting fat also.

 

all of this salad talk makes me think of a good greek salad. mmm

 

Agreed with Daka. You guys eat out way too much.

However, the issues isn't the frequency of you dining out, but what you eat.

All Hail the Empire of McDonald's/BurgerKing/KFC/PizzaHut/Hardee's/otherjunkfoodoutlets!

 

Aw Snap! Giant Proportions for $7.65! Zaxby's here I come! Plan9 you know what I'm talking about.

 

Pfft, all I remember was driving up 95 for a million years while you slept.

 

Levite hit it on the head. The small portions (IMHO as NOT A CHEF) is an off-branch of the french cuisine and the bastardized Asian-Fusion movement. People see one dish and think "well, that's dinner", when usually it is one of many "smaller" dishes. The sampler or "tasting" menu has rose up in the USA as a great way to see what the restaurant has to offer in one meal. One or two small appetizers, two or three plates of different types of entrées, and a dessert. All small plates, but equal out to a larger meal in then end. I love a chance to do a tasting menu, as you get to see the full range of the chef cooking. You are not stuck with one plate of food, you get to try many different types of menu/non-menu items. I've been on the receiving end of a sampler menu once and helped serve a tasting menu twice at my last kitchen. I think it's great, because it allows the chef to stretch his cooking muscles for one table of extra special guests.

Bourdain once said he flew to Japan to spend a week (this is before he became a TV star) at the sister Les Halles in Tokyo. The japanese/french chef looked appalled when he cooked a "normal" sized portion of a menu item, their same dish was half the size of the USA version. I think it shows that most other cultures have smaller portion amounts and the USA are leading the world with the larger "super-sized" portions of food. When chefs and other foreign trained chefs come over and cook for Americans, I think it shows in the portion size. Some adapt and some don't. Ergo, the smaller portion problem.

Also, smaller portions mean bigger flavor. Smaller portion of high end ingredients (foie gras, truffles, higher-end meats, ect) have their flavor come out when in smaller quantities. You don't have to overload the plate to fill the bowl, so the sauce you made comes out on top in the flavor chain. Not being buried in "filler" ingredients in order to make a larger dish.

*****

Side thought, I think TV ruined the "high end" restaurants for most people. You see shows use the "two bites of food" on a plate joke as a way to get a laugh or to make fun of something in the scene (the person dinning, rich people, ect). People watch sitcoms with these types of jokes and say, "That HAS to be what is going on in $100 a plate restaurants, I mean it was on TV!".

 

The "highest end" I ever see in restuatants is Denny's/Shari's/Olive Garden that kind of place. Even if the kids are not with me for a night out my interest is just not into that kind of place usually.
Of course the Nearest Olive Garden is now 70 miles in CD'a as it is and places like denny's are 90%+ of my options within a reasonable driving distance.

 

It's makes me sad in my cold, black, heart to hear "olive garden" as a high end restaurant. If it is corporate, it isn't a high-end restaurant. In my small redneck town, we have some really good privately owned, higher-end restaurants (that you can get in a small town of 30k rednecks). Yousf's 242, Josh's, and Cafe 1859 are all really nice restaurants and I know the chef's by name. They all are classically trained and put out really good food. Most plates are from the $20-$40 range and really show off what good food is.

*****

Also, I don't turn my nose up at corporate restaurants, I eat there as much as everyone else. Hell, I'd rather eat at my favorite greasy spoon as I would anything else. Good homecooked food for a good price. I'm not a foodie in any sense of the word, no foodie would eat as many hamburgers as I do. Mmmmmmmmmmm, fried potatoes....

 

I am not even sure what a true high end restaurant is. My visits to Denny's are few and far between and my last time at an Olive Garden was in Salem back in 2001 I think.
edit: There was this killer Greek restaurant I went to with my parents in Salem 10 years ago - it was delightful and decidedly NOT american "instant frozen" variety.

 

Eh, former sushi "chef" here. The raw ingredients are expensive, the preparation takes a good amount of time, and there's a certain *way* you're supposed to experience the food. A nigiri piece is supposed to fit in to your mouth quite comfortably, while "exploding" (easily disintegrating) after your first bite. You won't get the same effect if I threw a good sized portion of salmon or tuna over a rice ball.

Hope this explains some of it.