It's time to start digging up those Squirrelled Nuts!!!!

handful

zagfles said:

arnoldy said:

carl05 said:

Eating out is a luxury, prices are increasing so fast at the moment that i cannot justify doing it. We have swopped to inviting people round for dinner , still good fun at about a quarter of the cost

I agree with the sentiment, but I would question if its a luxury. Food mediocre and expensive often - starters often £8, mains £20, Puddings £8, Coffee £4, Wine £20 so about £110 - £120 with service for two. An expensive couple of hours.

Your idea of inviting people round is a good one.

We reserve eating out mainly for holidays when we haven't access to kitchen, or the occasional social going with the expectation of the food not being that good. 

What sort of places do you eat at, at £60 per head I'd be expecting something spectacularly good, not mediocre! Last meal out we had a couple of week ago, random Indian restaurant on the way home from a day out, was £60 for 3 of us! And was excellent. Popadoms and dips to start, then a curry each plus rice and breads to share, couple of side dishes. Beer/cokes to drink. No need/room for pudding.

If we just want good food, there's an excellent takeaway-with-tables type place not too far from us, where we can eat excellent curries/kebabs for about £5 each with a drink (non alcoholic), the surroundings/ambiance isn't like a restaurant, it's a busy takeaway, but the food is excellent.

A few years ago some friends dragged us to a posh place where one of the starters was "chicken tikka kebab" which I ordered, it was basically the same as the kebab I'd get at the takeaway but tiny, with less tasty sauces, and far more expensive, just for the starter!

To be fair, I see similar prices in most places now. Even in our local traditional village pub the cheapest things like gammon or lasagne are about £15-£16 and a T bone is £30! I wouldn't generally have 3 courses though but still find it's £80-100 these days with drinks. Strangely though, they always seem to be fairly full!

artyboy

Sea_Shell said:

I've just been reading about the plight of the humble Chippy! 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-62650572


Massive increases in costs and reduced footfall as customers cut back.

Many might not survive. 

So, even if we have money to spend,  places may no longer exist for us to spend at! 😕

We don't have take aways often, but we do love a chippy tea!  (Or lunch)

Im not sure that the spending of the "haves" will be able to keep the economy afloat on their own.

I read that last night. To be fair I have a relative that works in the fish industry and he's been very doom and gloom on this for a long while. 

I do wonder though if it's as bad as suggested though - yes there will be people that have to cut out their once a week trip to the chippy entirely, but there will be others that may shift from a more expensive takeaway 'down' to fish and chips. So there could be an element of evening things out...

In any event, I'll be supporting our local pla(i)ce tomorrow, not been for a while but I am partial to a nice bit of haddock. And Mrs Arty, philistine that she is, likes a pukka pie...

zagfles

handful said:

zagfles said:

arnoldy said:

carl05 said:

Eating out is a luxury, prices are increasing so fast at the moment that i cannot justify doing it. We have swopped to inviting people round for dinner , still good fun at about a quarter of the cost

I agree with the sentiment, but I would question if its a luxury. Food mediocre and expensive often - starters often £8, mains £20, Puddings £8, Coffee £4, Wine £20 so about £110 - £120 with service for two. An expensive couple of hours.

Your idea of inviting people round is a good one.

We reserve eating out mainly for holidays when we haven't access to kitchen, or the occasional social going with the expectation of the food not being that good. 

What sort of places do you eat at, at £60 per head I'd be expecting something spectacularly good, not mediocre! Last meal out we had a couple of week ago, random Indian restaurant on the way home from a day out, was £60 for 3 of us! And was excellent. Popadoms and dips to start, then a curry each plus rice and breads to share, couple of side dishes. Beer/cokes to drink. No need/room for pudding.

If we just want good food, there's an excellent takeaway-with-tables type place not too far from us, where we can eat excellent curries/kebabs for about £5 each with a drink (non alcoholic), the surroundings/ambiance isn't like a restaurant, it's a busy takeaway, but the food is excellent.

A few years ago some friends dragged us to a posh place where one of the starters was "chicken tikka kebab" which I ordered, it was basically the same as the kebab I'd get at the takeaway but tiny, with less tasty sauces, and far more expensive, just for the starter!

To be fair, I see similar prices in most places now. Even in our local traditional village pub the cheapest things like gammon or lasagne are about £15-£16 and a T bone is £30! I wouldn't generally have 3 courses though but still find it's £80-100 these days with drinks. Strangely though, they always seem to be fairly full!

£15 or so for a main course isn't too expensive, if it includes all the trimmings, but where's the rest going? Starters, puddings, drinks? I suspect there's a difference between people who see eating out as a rare treat and will want all the extras eg starters, puddings, expensive wine, cocktails, coffees etc which will add massively to the cost, and those who see it as a regular normal activity and so are just interested in the main event.

Before the pandemic we used to eat out at least once a week, and every day when on holiday (same now except we've partly replaced with takeaways). But generally, we wouldn't bother with starters/puddings. As much for the effect on our waistlines as wallets! Plus if the main course doesn't fill us up we'd not go there again - I'm sure a tactic of some restaurants especially in tourist areas is serve small portions for the main course so people are still hungry and order their overpriced puddings

Even recently, I'd baulk at spending much over £20 per head for just eating out!

Sea_Shell

Our usual eat out (when we do), is pub meal, mains only and a pint each.

Usually came to £30-40.

If that starts hitting £50 then I don't consider it "good value" and will do something else.

Vicious circle.

jimi_man

We rarely eat out, not so much because of the cost but just because the quality of the food is never usually as good as you can concoct in your own home. A curry is maybe one of the exceptions as it's often difficult to recreate a 'restaurant curry', though not impossible.

MallyGirl

Our local chippy is £11.95 for haddock and chips for one.
We rarely have F&C as I'd rather have a takeaway curry for a similar price. Our local Indian is BYOB which keeps the cost down if we want to eat out and we always bring home enough leftovers for a second meal just making more rice to pad it out.
If we eat out, other than Indian, then I would expect to pay somewhat more than £60 per head but that is the joy of living in the Thames Valley.

NedS

Bought a decent piece of beef from the farm shop this week, £21 and it fed 6 people. With a bottle of wine and all the trimmings, not much more than £5-6/head. The kids and the dishwasher took care of the clearing up afterwards.

Anonymous101

I must admit we rarely eat out and get takeaways once every few weeks.
My wife and I did go out for a meal last week. A local Italian, it was around £65 for the two of us. Starter, main and 2 drinks each.

I thought that was reasonable as far as eating out goes but I can never help thinking that £65 for one meal is a lot. You can buy some very good ingredients and a nice bottle of wine for half of that.

That thought pattern quite often leads us to not eating out at middle of the road establishments. However by extending the logic to not being able to cook top end food myself, we will very occasionally go somewhere that perhaps is a little more expensive (perhaps twice as much as the Italian I mentioned). I don't feel that we get any less value from these places, if anything I feel like we are getting more.

As the costs of these places increase with inflation I doubt we'd visit the the middle of the road places at all. We'd possibly still go to the odd higher end place though.

Dizee123

My sister and I send each other Groupons/Itsons for local restaurants we think the other might like.  This has allowed us to try restaurants we might pass up on for being a little outside our price range and to try different cuisines.  Who knew I would discover a liking for Lebanese food in my 50s!.  This can bring the bill down substantially, but varies from place to place.  Since puddings went up in price, we sometimes share a pudding saying that we are full up, rather than being mean!

Another way we save is sometimes to go for the early bird menu, or pre-theatre supper, which is often 2 courses for £15.  They are not to know that we never go to the theatre at night, only the occasional matinee

A world without the occasional meal out is just not be contemplated unless things get very, very bad......Unfortunately, we live in a small city popular with tourists so prices tend to be higher than in major cities with more competition.

 

MallyGirl

Dizee123 said:

A world without the occasional meal out is just not be contemplated unless things get very, very bad......

I'm with you - just reading these posts has triggered me to book a meal out for before daughter goes back to uni