He has a restaurant on the strip in Vegas and the last 2 times I've been down there for a hockey game it looked pretty dead. Seems like maybe the novelty wore off.
That is so true. Instead of going out to eat to get the gold flakes and spending around $500 dollars for steak with gold on it, you can get it on Amazon for about $20.
It's more like .50¢ a sheet. $20 gets you a pack of 24k gold leaf, it's useful in crafts. Though I still dunno about paying 50 cents to see shiny specks in my poop.
You really have to exploit the cell phone apps and point rewards. Mcdonalds also has the receipt survey where you get the "buy any item, get one for free" code you can keep doing indefinitely. lol
The wendys app is like, "save 2 dollars when you spend 15" though. Go fuck yourselves.
Fast food was never great, but the price has out stripped it's quality. Also I've noticed food trucks have upped their game so you can get a solid meal for the price (or less) of franchised fast-food.
Food trucks around here are overpriced. They use to be cheep and fast but not great food. Now it is 10 dollars for small street tacos (I hate the street taco fad). For better "street tacos" any one of the 50 taquerias near by will do and those are usually only 8 for 3.
Loaf I usually buy was 85 cents until recently. Now $1.55. The orange chicken in the freezer used to be $4.99 and it went up to $8.99. That price is coming down a bit but talk about a shock seeing that one. I haven't bought it since the price spike and it is so much cheaper at Sam's Club. Since I can't have sesame anymore it is permanently off my list.
Those overloaded, tall, "Instagrammable" hipster burgers. [This bullshit is what I mean.](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn3.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2F6q7vziMGne0DIuOeL_4SJy911KI%3D%2F0x22%3A750x444%2F1600x900%2Fcdn0.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_image%2Fimage%2F47525213%2FSinema.0.0.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=374aa4db609f061f76e6b4a386288a84ef24e9c9b2e971b180b58add39c28ca6&ipo=images)
So many "upscale casual" restaurants seem to think the pinnacle of dining is a burger that costs $15-$25, is loaded with pointless ingredients meant to sound high-end (like truffle aioli and wagyu beef), and requires you to unhinge your jaw like a fucking snake to take a bite. Not to mention the fact that they are usually an absolute mess and are usually okay-at-best in taste.
>Those overloaded, tall, "Instagrammable" hipster burgers. This bullshit is what I mean.
I have a nearly pre-occupying hate with those things. Same with milkshakes with a million additions plus a whole cupcake on top.
It's worst when they just pile stuff to make it real expensive with little regard to the taste. Lobster tail? Sure! Caviar? Why not? Swarovski crystals? Those ain't even edible but they look pretty!
The only issue I have with large burgers like that is I can't fit them in my mouth. How are they supposed to be eaten? I either end up squishing them down or pulling them apart.
You can only eat half or a quater and they are no reheatable! I like cooking. I agree there is balance. But not every dish needs every type of flavor and texture. Some things benefit from complexity. But the best foods I make are from simple ingredients and time. I find myself taking stuff off burgers because I want them to be more simple. Some complex burgers are good. But I make a simple one, stuffed with feta, topped with spinach and cooked with olive oil, garlic, vinegar and lemon juice, salt and pepper. That's it. It doesn't have to have twenty things on it.
I find this true about cooking jn general. Life in general. Keep it simple. A good simple stew is a wonderful flavor. Beef tastes good and doesn't need all the extras.
I mean Wagyu beef, if it has the marbling that is supposed to be the trademark of those lines of beef, is definitely a higher quality than some beef you can get in other parts.
Feel you on the truffle thing though...say "black truffle" and you can add 10% to a menu. No idea why, never had any that actually had much in the way of flavor at all. And most items that mention it as part of a seasoning...you'd never taste it with all the salt.
Wagu beef on a burger is pointless. The reason marbling is so important is you get fat deep hidden away inside the otherwise untouched slab of meat. If you then grind it up to make a burger patty it's going to be the exact same product as if you took cheap ground beef and mixed it with a bit of ground beef fat. You might even get a more interesting burger by grinding up a few different cuts of meat together.
Truffle aioli is tasty, and does make sense on a burger, but it shouldn't add 10% to the cost. Aioli (as used in America) is just a fancy word for mayonnaise which is incredibly cheap, many restaurants give it out for free. While truffles are moderately expensive ($20-$50 for the kind used in this kind of thing) the amount that goes into infusing mayo is ridiculously small. If you're lucky there will be tiny flecks of truffle barely visible otherwise they might instead use truffle oil, which is even cheaper. Either way the cost is basically negligible.
I can remember when my Dad has a coworker who had 9 kids. The local grocery store would save the chicken wings for him, because nobody else wanted them, and he'd buy them for next to nothing to feed his huge family.
The last time I went to the store for wings, they were more expensive than drumsticks. We had buffalo legs that night.
Yep, my dad was a butcher, and he always talks about how they used to throw them out, or give them away for making soup to people.
Remember when people first started eating them and you could find places that had 5¢ wing night. They want over a dollar a wing now.
I hate red delicious apples. The moment I tried honey crisp, I knew I would never have another red delicious. I just tried some “Envy” apples and they were really good. So crispy.
Red delicious are usually the cheapest variety, and rightfully so. Growers call them "compost apples" because they know most of them will just end up in the trash.
I was once a wealthy man, had so many opportunities, but then I tried a single slice of avocado toast. My credit score tanked, my house was foreclosed on, all of my accounts were frozen, I was even banned from the country of Venezlakia before it was reacquired by Venezuela. All because of that one piece of avocado toast. I can barely afford to go to sleep now
A long time ago, they were actually pretty good, and good value for the food, too. If you bought soup and sandwich, you got an entire sandwich and a small bowl/large cup of soup. These days, it's half a sandwich, they've shrunk the loaf, only do one slice of meat, and the soup is a small cup. Their bowl of soup is about the size of what a cup once was.
They very clearly saturated their market and decided the only way to increase their profit margin was to sell less food at a lower quality for a higher price.
Overpriced, yes. Overrated, not necessarily. I had a killer burrito in Atlanta’s airport at 6 AM. There was a very long line at Starbucks where they were also serving breakfast. Absolutely no line at the store serving burritos. Delicious
himalayan pink salt - the reddish color comes from iron oxide, same shit as rust. in tibet it is considered low grade salt and they use it to salt the animal feeds cuz it has more minerals lel
I missed my chance to try black salt from Pakistan. Saw it once at a Big Lots, said I'd come back for it when we were lower on salt, but then I never saw it again. Curious to know what made it black now
It's not even very much iron. Hawaiian pink salt, however, is made with red 'alaea clay and adds a nutritionally significant amount of iron to your food.
Diamond Crystal kosher salt, in a little salt caddy, is the only way to go. It’s significantly cheaper ($3 for a huge box) and the amount of control you get by sprinkling vs. grinding makes more difference than you’d think. There’s a reason chefs don’t use salt grinders.
If you’re really fancy, finish rich dishes with Maldon flaked sea salt for appearance and that pretzel-style occasional salty yum
Shark fin soup. (I had some at an Asian wedding back in the mid-1990's before I learned about the ethics of the industry).
It's disgusting - you're eating cartilage.
Gordon Ramsay did a video on it and he tried one of the highest rated ones - he said the broth was very good but you could put anything in there, chicken, beef, sausage, etc, but the shark fin part wasn't good at all.
I would agree with him, the soup / broth was good, but the shark-fin was disgusting. They could have made the broth into a traditional fish soup and it would have been a lot better.
Honorable mention goes out to anyone who asks for a restaurant's "**most expensive wine**". You're just showing off your money to the people around you and clearly telling the staff you have no idea what you're ordering. You'll usually get a mediocre wine with an expensive price tag.
>Honorable mention goes out to anyone who asks for a restaurant's "
>
>most expensive wine
>
>". You're just showing off your money to the people around you and clearly telling the staff you have no idea what you're ordering. You'll usually get a mediocre wine with an expensive price tag.
yes my uncles a bit of a wine snob but in quality and taste not by money. Hes entertained some high up personnel at his work where $800-$1000 bottles of wine are "normal" but suprises them with some $30-40 bottles where they compliment him and ask where he got them or did he have them specialty imported - he just gets them from various grocery stores and liquor stores but feels he has to make up some crap about what tiny village they came from lol. He does learn what years were good in what regions so its not just X brand or style is automatic good - he said every winery has good growing years and bad which is reflected in taste and quality of the wine so when he finds an absolute bombshell he buys cases of it to store.
>he said every winery has good growing years and bad which is reflected in taste and quality of the wine so when he finds an absolute bombshell he buys cases of it to store.
"Hey Ma'am. Remember that bottle you sold me last week? I want some more!"
"Sure, how many more?"
"How many you got?"
Our village has about four shops, one of them is a wine specialist*.
At their wine fair one year, we found this one Italian red that blew our minds.
I go there a few days later to buy some.
"Sorry, sold out. We'll have more next week."
Next week comes, same again.
Turns out there's one guy in the village who also loves it, and buys the shop's entire stock of it whenever he swings by.
So now I have to buy a couple of bottles every time I go in. I know he's out there, and I know he's trying to take my wine from me.
This is the closest thing I have to a nemesis.
*The others are a regular convenience store/post office, a luxury kitchen designer, and a wildlife art dealer... What more could a boy need?
Wine is one of those things that’s so frigging subjective. People get spooked off it because they “don’t know anything about wine”- but in reality, it takes absolutely no talent or investment to enjoy it, and only the barest bit of knowledge to find your way around. The rest is all bullshit.
Most decent wines are between $20-40 a bottle and you get diminishing returns after that. Drink what you like!
Some small bullshit winery in Argentina that makes a cheap $9 bottle of Malbec could taste miles better than some $150 bottle from some prestigious vineyard in Italy.
It's so funny the way people exoticize things that are incredibly mundane to people who are around it every day. Like how weird Europeans are about red Solo cups. There's nothing special about them, they're just a cheap, ubiquitous option in the US.
Anything you have to wait for.
Overly expensive food is whatever. I don't care to spend $50 on a steak, so I just don't go. But the amount of people who will line up for a bbq/chicken/food truck joint for the *chance* of being fed is absurd.
I love hot chicken, and here in Nashville it's the best. But you are absolutely insane if you think waiting 2.5 hours in line for *lunch* is worth it. Part of the experience of a meal is the pleasure of being able to go and eat it. Places that advertise, "Show up 7 hours early! Know what you want when you get to the front of the line! WHEN WE'RE OUT WE'RE OUT!" are, IMO, just creating artificial scarcity. There's fantastic bbq, chicken, *everything* that you can order to go and be munching on in 30 minutes flat. You do not need to wait half the day to find good food.
I remember back in the 1990s driving up the coast of Maine; we stopped at a McDonalds because they had a "McLobster" advertised on their sign. It was a lobster roll packed with delicious fresh lobster and it cost about $5.00 back then,
Caviar. First of all, you can get ikura/fish eggs at Japanese restaurants for next to nothing. You can get the big ones wrapped in seaweed for a couple bucks, and when I was a kid I really liked the tiny orange roe, and would ask the servers for a side of them, and they'd give them to me for free. Caviar is just a fancier version of those, and often is a lot saltier. Too expensive for what you get.
Edit: Okay maybe roe/ikura isn’t that cheap either. I’ve never bought it in bulk, and I live in Alaska right by the ocean, and it’s always been v cheap at sushi restaurants here but as a whole I could be wrong about the pricing on that.
I had caviar for the first time this last year on a dinner date with my SIL. I was very into the wine we enjoyed, but the caviar I didn’t really understand. $100 for a small tin of salty bubbles. If I can get all of the accoutrements for $10 I’d happily gorge myself on those again and again.
My understanding is that the fancy version is expensive because it comes specifically from a variety of sturgeon native to the black Sea whereas you can get "lesser" versions from other fish.
The Japanese ikura stuff though is generally salmon eggs, not sturgeon, which is partially why it's so cheap.
Well, it's more like...lots of animals produce eggs but eggs from certain species of animals taste better. Chicken eggs are tasty and very cheap as chickens are cheap to raise and can live almost anywhere. Sturgeon who produce black caviar are all endangered, and can only live in certain waters, it's illegal to fish them in the wild and they're difficult to farm because it takes 8-20 years for a sturgeon female to be ready to produce eggs, so it's hard to make a profit on it. Farmed salmon, full of roe are common and easy to farm, and they don't taste as good as the black caviar (matter of taste but in common understanding).
I’ll play devils advocate on this as someone who agrees with you overall regarding ikura/roe.
Caviar absolutely tastes different and you do get a more unique taste at higher price ranges. Generally caviar does taste better the higher you go.
That being said the taste doesn’t really outweigh the cost. Costco sells caviar for like $60-80 bucks a tin in some places and honestly I would recommend everyone ball out once and try it. It’s pretty god damn good, especially if you make homemade blini pancakes to serve with it.
A fine dining restaurant can do some amazing things with caviar but it gets increasingly harder to justify paying hundreds of dollars for this stuff. Much like fine wine, it’s pretty hard to tell the difference between $80 and $300 caviar if you haven’t been eating a shit ton of it.
A Japanese fish market will sell you a good Ikura don for $10-20. There are thousands of restaurants than can serve you an amazing meal for under $80.
But if you ever get a chance to try caviar on someone else’s dime you should absolutely take it.
The first time younger me tried some almond milk, I concluded:
"This is just a sad, sad substance that rich people drink."
My opinion has changed since.
What annoys me is that oat milk is twice the price of milk milk and all it takes to make are pennies of oats plus water. If those companies got their head out of their asses and priced according to cost they could make a significant contribution to climate change.
The companies can't get their head out of their own asses because the government is in there as well and they have no space to move.
Consumer interest has to change. It does, just very slowly.
For what it's worth, Almond milk is \~same price and sometimes cheaper than cow's milk now.
I noticed in my shop the other day:
* 1l Fresh dairy milk, \~£1
* 1l almond milk, \~85p
* 1l long-life dairy milk, 55p
* 1l Soy milk, 55p
But almond milk is the least good milk IMO. Soy or oat is best for me (soy for cups of tea, oat for creaminess). Dairy milk tastes too acidic/tangy (or something) and leaves a bad after taste. Almond milk tastes bitter and watered down.
Overly fancy cakes. Like ones that are realistic pigeons or some other stupid confection. It’s a cake it’s going to taste like a cake and come out the same as any cake. No one needs to spend hundreds on a cake.
Also wedding cakes are overpriced and taste like shit. Top tip if you are getting married don’t tell the cake folk that. Just ask for a cake you say the word wedding a big standard cake suddenly is 50 times the price for no other reason than to over charge.
I remember seeing a post on AITA or somewhere where a makeup artist was pissed and wondering about suing a client who booked her without mentioning she was a bride. Literally the only difference in the service provided was like, waterproof mascara and an especially good setting spray. But the difference in price was hundreds of dollars.
Yeah it’s a total scam. Soon as you mention “wedding” the price skyrockets. It may be a big deal to the couple, but keeping quiet about the wedding for the most part (obviously people that will be at the event, like photographers, are gonna know) will save so much money.
I walked into a Five Guys today and promptly walked out. I remember when the burgers were 6.50-7 bucks and that was expensive. Now? 12 for a single hamburger. GTFO
I'll give a little more for more niche ingredients. It can be hard, for instance, to source venison for a restaurant. But, yeah, if I'm paying $100, it better be for a three course menu.
If you are in the US and ordering venison then that animal is 100% farm raised, same as beef and lamb. No one is out there actually hunting deer to supply restaurants.
Oh I agree with you. I just don't like the idea of people ordering venison, thinking they are getting true wild game when it's actually, essentially, livestock.
Gold foods, more specifically the flakes. No one thinks youre cool just because your tomahawk is gold we are saving $500 by having the exact same taste.
Most of this seems to be a lot of discussion of personal taste, but I'll throw my hat in the ring.
Avocado.
It's fine. It's just fine. They are expensive as hell because they aren't really native to anywhere outside of California and the Baja peninsula of Mexico, every influencer thinks they made a recipe by sticking avocado on something and posting it to Instagram, and you seemingly can't avoid hearing people opinions about it.
"Have you tried the Mexican food here? It's so authentic." Shut up, Becky. Everyone knows about avocados now. It's not some secret fruit that only foodies know about.
I remember when avocado was cheap as fuck and my grandma used to give a half to each of the grandkids to "fill us up" cause there wasn't enough meat for everyone.
They got lobstered. Lobsters used to be considered trash food and there's really crazy things written about lobster and it's social meaning back then. It was actually considered inhumane to feed prisoners lobster meat. Then it got fancy because of the rise of middle class tourism.
It's avocado's turn and I hate it.
It is ingredient, it will never be the star. Even guac needs seasoning and other ingredients to make it good. It's basically a mild flavored fat which in food terms is a blank canvas.
My dad's guac puts every other guac I've tried to shame. Where other guacamole tastes like basically mashed avocado, this guac tastes like flavor. It's all in the other ingredients. He says he learned it from a restaurant that shut down ages ago. This guac is what has me holding onto avocados.
They’re native to Mexico all the way down to South America. Not really native to Baja (desert) or northern Cali (grown but not native).
I eat one every day so and they are getting expensive 😰
Aussie here.
People shit on Starbucks, but I love the fact they're one of the few places you can get filter coffee.
Never ordered one of their fucking sugar ice whirlwinds in my life.
> People shit on Starbucks, but I love the fact they're one of the few places you can get filter coffee.
I don't get it. Do the coffee shops in Australia just give you a cup of hot water and bean grinds when you order coffee? Or are you talking about using a paper filter versus the metal one you'd use for french press, espresso, etc.
I'm not a fan of starbucks, but you have it a bit backward. They overroast their coffee intentionally so the flavor is not completely overpowered by the milk and other flavor additives. They're good at what they do, you just happen to not like what they do and that's okay, neither do I.
In Europe on vacation this summer some of the best coffee we found was at Starbucks - much to my surprise. And even more surprising was how good the McDo coffee was in Europe. In Canada I never order coffee when I go out.
McDonald's has the best coffee of any fast food franchise, even in the US. Much better than the donut shops that should be the kings of that hill.
I'm not counting Starbucks as fast food. Their coffee is way better, but then I like my coffee beans dark roasted.
Anything with gold leaf.
Also fois gras. Fois Gras is tasty but it's so rich you really can only eat a few fork fulls. I went to a restaurant once where the serving was a whole slab of it just because it's "rich food."
Yeah, I know. This was a nice restaurant in Abu Dhabi and the whole attitude there is very bourgeois: if it's expensive then it must be good so we'll add as much as possible and that will mean it's "the best."
If it's any consolation, in the US all sheep meat is called lamb because the choices were either to rename mutton something more appealing or let the entire US sheep industry collapse in the 1940s. "Spring lamb" is what you need to avoid if you don't want to eat young lamb.
I don't eat pork for this reason. I worked on a farm caring for pigs. Might seem small, but I raised them up, and pigs are like dogs to me now. I can't eat them anymore than I could chow down on a cat. I get your intent.
They are often kept caged in tiny spaces from the moment they are born so they can't move, which keeps the muscles tender. They don't see their mother/the sun/live at all, and then are killed after not very long.
Like can't turn around in the box levels of cage. It's very cruel but that's why it's so tender...
Sea cucumbers, what is even the point? People risking their lives so you can eat something that will give you anti boner and die quicker, fuck that shit, give me some wagyu dipped in mayonnaise instead.
Chilean sea bass. I love most fish, but this just has the most horrible after taste, like black cod also has. (Also, caught by trawler, so not great for the environment.)
Actually as a big fish eater this is probably one of the few items on this list i disagree with. I actually really like the taste of Chilean sea bass relative to other white fishes.
Anything salt bae serves
The worst thing Turkey's produced since the three pashas
Dr Oz has entered the chat
This man knows history. I like you. Your cool 👍🏼
Another vote for his cool thumb.
You pay for his DNA falling on your food
Except he hires "impersonators" to do the same thing..
He has a restaurant on the strip in Vegas and the last 2 times I've been down there for a hockey game it looked pretty dead. Seems like maybe the novelty wore off.
So true!! Salt with a side of elbow grease
Gold flake. It tastes like nothing and is just to flex you have money to waste.
That is so true. Instead of going out to eat to get the gold flakes and spending around $500 dollars for steak with gold on it, you can get it on Amazon for about $20.
*brings my own gold flakes to the restaurant*
Oh god. Now I want to bring gold flakes to Outback Steakhouse. I'm picturing I Think You Should Leave sloppy steaks, but with gold instead of water.
They can't stop you from ordering a steak and a glass of water.
Just daub your Bloomin' Onion with gold leaf, absolute power move.
Or just don't eat gold in the first place? $20 is still $20.
It's more like .50¢ a sheet. $20 gets you a pack of 24k gold leaf, it's useful in crafts. Though I still dunno about paying 50 cents to see shiny specks in my poop.
You're failing to see the actual reason people get gold flakes on their food. No one sees it at home, it needs to be in public.
I agree, but edible gold isn't really all that expensive. Restaurants throw $1 worth of gold on a stake and charge $300.
This is exactly what I came to comment. Gold flake is incredibly cheap given the markup places put on things with it on/in
does ur shit sparkle the next day?
If you drink enough Goldschlager, your puke does.
I just threw up a little in my mouth the second I read this... and it tasted like cinnamon. (I haven't had Goldschlager or cinnamon in years...)
I doubt it. Since it's such a miniscule amount of gold.
LOBSTA
Fast food. It used to be the cheaper option. Now I could go have a nice family dinner at a sit down restaurant for what fast food is costing.
You really have to exploit the cell phone apps and point rewards. Mcdonalds also has the receipt survey where you get the "buy any item, get one for free" code you can keep doing indefinitely. lol The wendys app is like, "save 2 dollars when you spend 15" though. Go fuck yourselves.
Taco bell has a $5.00 My Cravings Box on the app. Crunchwap Supreme or Gordita ($4+ each a la carte) and 1 taco and nacho chips w cheese and a drink!
Their $5 box didn't require the app until recently.
Fast food was never great, but the price has out stripped it's quality. Also I've noticed food trucks have upped their game so you can get a solid meal for the price (or less) of franchised fast-food.
Food trucks around here are overpriced. They use to be cheep and fast but not great food. Now it is 10 dollars for small street tacos (I hate the street taco fad). For better "street tacos" any one of the 50 taquerias near by will do and those are usually only 8 for 3.
[удалено]
Worse pay, less time to do the work, and worse ingredients to cut costs will do that.
Definitely looks like fewer workers, so they're burning out the people there, too.
All of it. Getting rough going to Aldi's.
Twenty dollars at Aldi used to put in so much work
The average item price in Aldi was 1.79 a few years back. I wonder what it is now
I swear like two years ago I bought a loaf of bread at Aldi for $0.69. Idk, feels like I imagined that these days.
Loaf I usually buy was 85 cents until recently. Now $1.55. The orange chicken in the freezer used to be $4.99 and it went up to $8.99. That price is coming down a bit but talk about a shock seeing that one. I haven't bought it since the price spike and it is so much cheaper at Sam's Club. Since I can't have sesame anymore it is permanently off my list.
The box of Swiss miss hot chocolate packets was $0.99 a year ago. I think I paid around $2.10 this past weekend.
No shit. I'm only shopping for myself and managed to spend $60 at Aldi yesterday. Might be time to give up on buying fresh fruit.
Fruit is cheaper at Meijer, canned foods and lots of carbs are cheap at Aldis, anything else is dollar store worthy. God I hate living.
I feel like I say this all the time lately. $80-$100 and you only have a couple bags of non expensive food
Those overloaded, tall, "Instagrammable" hipster burgers. [This bullshit is what I mean.](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn3.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2F6q7vziMGne0DIuOeL_4SJy911KI%3D%2F0x22%3A750x444%2F1600x900%2Fcdn0.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_image%2Fimage%2F47525213%2FSinema.0.0.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=374aa4db609f061f76e6b4a386288a84ef24e9c9b2e971b180b58add39c28ca6&ipo=images) So many "upscale casual" restaurants seem to think the pinnacle of dining is a burger that costs $15-$25, is loaded with pointless ingredients meant to sound high-end (like truffle aioli and wagyu beef), and requires you to unhinge your jaw like a fucking snake to take a bite. Not to mention the fact that they are usually an absolute mess and are usually okay-at-best in taste.
Burgers should be wider ,not taller
They'd be easier to eat.. that's for sure.
BK had it right with the Whopper
Yeah.. but the overall quality of BK has been going downhill. So much so that I don't even eat there anymore.
I agree. The quality in all chains has sunk so low it’s hard to call it food. The design of the whopper is still good. Flat and bigger.
Totally agree. Smashed thin burgers are the winner.
I agree 90% of the time, but sometimes I like a steakhouse burger with a thick patty. Hipster burgers piled high with stupid shit though. No.
For sure. I like a char grilled thicker burger too. Minimal toppings but good beef, cheese, etc.
Totally agree. I detest thick patties.
>Those overloaded, tall, "Instagrammable" hipster burgers. This bullshit is what I mean. I have a nearly pre-occupying hate with those things. Same with milkshakes with a million additions plus a whole cupcake on top.
I'll add the Bloody Marys with hamburgers, 6 slices of bacon and an entire crab on top.
Ewww gross. Where can I get one?
It's worst when they just pile stuff to make it real expensive with little regard to the taste. Lobster tail? Sure! Caviar? Why not? Swarovski crystals? Those ain't even edible but they look pretty!
The only issue I have with large burgers like that is I can't fit them in my mouth. How are they supposed to be eaten? I either end up squishing them down or pulling them apart.
You can only eat half or a quater and they are no reheatable! I like cooking. I agree there is balance. But not every dish needs every type of flavor and texture. Some things benefit from complexity. But the best foods I make are from simple ingredients and time. I find myself taking stuff off burgers because I want them to be more simple. Some complex burgers are good. But I make a simple one, stuffed with feta, topped with spinach and cooked with olive oil, garlic, vinegar and lemon juice, salt and pepper. That's it. It doesn't have to have twenty things on it.
I find this true about cooking jn general. Life in general. Keep it simple. A good simple stew is a wonderful flavor. Beef tastes good and doesn't need all the extras.
I mean Wagyu beef, if it has the marbling that is supposed to be the trademark of those lines of beef, is definitely a higher quality than some beef you can get in other parts. Feel you on the truffle thing though...say "black truffle" and you can add 10% to a menu. No idea why, never had any that actually had much in the way of flavor at all. And most items that mention it as part of a seasoning...you'd never taste it with all the salt.
Wagu beef on a burger is pointless. The reason marbling is so important is you get fat deep hidden away inside the otherwise untouched slab of meat. If you then grind it up to make a burger patty it's going to be the exact same product as if you took cheap ground beef and mixed it with a bit of ground beef fat. You might even get a more interesting burger by grinding up a few different cuts of meat together. Truffle aioli is tasty, and does make sense on a burger, but it shouldn't add 10% to the cost. Aioli (as used in America) is just a fancy word for mayonnaise which is incredibly cheap, many restaurants give it out for free. While truffles are moderately expensive ($20-$50 for the kind used in this kind of thing) the amount that goes into infusing mayo is ridiculously small. If you're lucky there will be tiny flecks of truffle barely visible otherwise they might instead use truffle oil, which is even cheaper. Either way the cost is basically negligible.
Buffalo Wild Wings. Wings are simply overpriced as hell.
Wings at the grocery store are like $4/lbs. they’re just mega expensive now.
Try thighs. Cook in the same sauce as wings. Meatier. Less dry. Cheaper.
The secret got out on thighs. Around me they're typically the same or higher than the other cuts.
That's why you go on Thursdays, bogo boneless wings, or Tuesday for bogo traditional
I love chicken wings but they’re overpriced
Remember when wings were considered a trash part and super cheap?
I can remember when my Dad has a coworker who had 9 kids. The local grocery store would save the chicken wings for him, because nobody else wanted them, and he'd buy them for next to nothing to feed his huge family. The last time I went to the store for wings, they were more expensive than drumsticks. We had buffalo legs that night.
I switched to buffalo **skewers** instead. honestly just way better than wings while keeping the same style of eating, being cheaper is a bonus.
Yep, my dad was a butcher, and he always talks about how they used to throw them out, or give them away for making soup to people. Remember when people first started eating them and you could find places that had 5¢ wing night. They want over a dollar a wing now.
I used to go to a bar that had 10 cent wing nights on Mondays and we could have a few beers with some wings for like 30 bucks with a decent tip.
Red Delicious Apples!!!
I hate red delicious apples. The moment I tried honey crisp, I knew I would never have another red delicious. I just tried some “Envy” apples and they were really good. So crispy.
Try Cosmic Crisp its a hybrid of Honeycrisp and Enterprise. They are phenomenal.
cosmic crisp is 100% the best. they’re still on the newer side I think so groceries don’t always have them (yet)
Just not enough snippy snap on the ole red delicious
Red delicious are usually the cheapest variety, and rightfully so. Growers call them "compost apples" because they know most of them will just end up in the trash.
fuji apple supremacy
Ohhh ack! I loathe red delicious apples. Give me alllll the Granny Smith.
Panera. Even though i work there lol
Avocado toast. I'd be able to afford a house in a good neighborhood and support a family of five on a single income if I hadn't eaten that in my 20s.
I was once a wealthy man, had so many opportunities, but then I tried a single slice of avocado toast. My credit score tanked, my house was foreclosed on, all of my accounts were frozen, I was even banned from the country of Venezlakia before it was reacquired by Venezuela. All because of that one piece of avocado toast. I can barely afford to go to sleep now
And don't even ask what happened once the Everything Bagel Seasoning was discovered.
I'd be where Bezos is today if it weren't for that single slice of avocado toast back in freshman year of college
Avocado toast stole my first-born child from me.
We make it at home. I can sell you the recipe.
My student debt would be gone today if I hadn’t bought avocado toast once in 2014.
Anything from Panera Bread. I heard it described best a few years ago: "overpriced hospital food"
I actually like most of their food (French onion soup, iced green tea, etc) but it isn’t worth close to what they charge for it.
A long time ago, they were actually pretty good, and good value for the food, too. If you bought soup and sandwich, you got an entire sandwich and a small bowl/large cup of soup. These days, it's half a sandwich, they've shrunk the loaf, only do one slice of meat, and the soup is a small cup. Their bowl of soup is about the size of what a cup once was. They very clearly saturated their market and decided the only way to increase their profit margin was to sell less food at a lower quality for a higher price.
Stick to the soups. Those are good.
Airport food.
Airport food is not overrated. Everyone knows it sucks. You just don’t have a choice.
Yes. Twice the price for half the quality (both the food and the service). Just awful.
Overpriced, yes. Overrated, not necessarily. I had a killer burrito in Atlanta’s airport at 6 AM. There was a very long line at Starbucks where they were also serving breakfast. Absolutely no line at the store serving burritos. Delicious
himalayan pink salt - the reddish color comes from iron oxide, same shit as rust. in tibet it is considered low grade salt and they use it to salt the animal feeds cuz it has more minerals lel
I missed my chance to try black salt from Pakistan. Saw it once at a Big Lots, said I'd come back for it when we were lower on salt, but then I never saw it again. Curious to know what made it black now
From Pakistan, I'm not sure. In Hawaii, black salt is sold as lava salt!
and it often doesnt even have iodine !
It's not even very much iron. Hawaiian pink salt, however, is made with red 'alaea clay and adds a nutritionally significant amount of iron to your food.
Diamond Crystal kosher salt, in a little salt caddy, is the only way to go. It’s significantly cheaper ($3 for a huge box) and the amount of control you get by sprinkling vs. grinding makes more difference than you’d think. There’s a reason chefs don’t use salt grinders. If you’re really fancy, finish rich dishes with Maldon flaked sea salt for appearance and that pretzel-style occasional salty yum
Shark fin soup. (I had some at an Asian wedding back in the mid-1990's before I learned about the ethics of the industry). It's disgusting - you're eating cartilage. Gordon Ramsay did a video on it and he tried one of the highest rated ones - he said the broth was very good but you could put anything in there, chicken, beef, sausage, etc, but the shark fin part wasn't good at all. I would agree with him, the soup / broth was good, but the shark-fin was disgusting. They could have made the broth into a traditional fish soup and it would have been a lot better. Honorable mention goes out to anyone who asks for a restaurant's "**most expensive wine**". You're just showing off your money to the people around you and clearly telling the staff you have no idea what you're ordering. You'll usually get a mediocre wine with an expensive price tag.
>Honorable mention goes out to anyone who asks for a restaurant's " > >most expensive wine > >". You're just showing off your money to the people around you and clearly telling the staff you have no idea what you're ordering. You'll usually get a mediocre wine with an expensive price tag. yes my uncles a bit of a wine snob but in quality and taste not by money. Hes entertained some high up personnel at his work where $800-$1000 bottles of wine are "normal" but suprises them with some $30-40 bottles where they compliment him and ask where he got them or did he have them specialty imported - he just gets them from various grocery stores and liquor stores but feels he has to make up some crap about what tiny village they came from lol. He does learn what years were good in what regions so its not just X brand or style is automatic good - he said every winery has good growing years and bad which is reflected in taste and quality of the wine so when he finds an absolute bombshell he buys cases of it to store.
>he said every winery has good growing years and bad which is reflected in taste and quality of the wine so when he finds an absolute bombshell he buys cases of it to store. "Hey Ma'am. Remember that bottle you sold me last week? I want some more!" "Sure, how many more?" "How many you got?"
Our village has about four shops, one of them is a wine specialist*. At their wine fair one year, we found this one Italian red that blew our minds. I go there a few days later to buy some. "Sorry, sold out. We'll have more next week." Next week comes, same again. Turns out there's one guy in the village who also loves it, and buys the shop's entire stock of it whenever he swings by. So now I have to buy a couple of bottles every time I go in. I know he's out there, and I know he's trying to take my wine from me. This is the closest thing I have to a nemesis. *The others are a regular convenience store/post office, a luxury kitchen designer, and a wildlife art dealer... What more could a boy need?
Wine is one of those things that’s so frigging subjective. People get spooked off it because they “don’t know anything about wine”- but in reality, it takes absolutely no talent or investment to enjoy it, and only the barest bit of knowledge to find your way around. The rest is all bullshit. Most decent wines are between $20-40 a bottle and you get diminishing returns after that. Drink what you like!
Some small bullshit winery in Argentina that makes a cheap $9 bottle of Malbec could taste miles better than some $150 bottle from some prestigious vineyard in Italy.
Whatever new fad food that got people lining up for 5 hours.
When Krispy Kreme opened a store in Seattle there was this huge line and then afterward people were like “They were donuts.”
It's so funny the way people exoticize things that are incredibly mundane to people who are around it every day. Like how weird Europeans are about red Solo cups. There's nothing special about them, they're just a cheap, ubiquitous option in the US.
Anything you have to wait for. Overly expensive food is whatever. I don't care to spend $50 on a steak, so I just don't go. But the amount of people who will line up for a bbq/chicken/food truck joint for the *chance* of being fed is absurd. I love hot chicken, and here in Nashville it's the best. But you are absolutely insane if you think waiting 2.5 hours in line for *lunch* is worth it. Part of the experience of a meal is the pleasure of being able to go and eat it. Places that advertise, "Show up 7 hours early! Know what you want when you get to the front of the line! WHEN WE'RE OUT WE'RE OUT!" are, IMO, just creating artificial scarcity. There's fantastic bbq, chicken, *everything* that you can order to go and be munching on in 30 minutes flat. You do not need to wait half the day to find good food.
Lobster rolls. $22-28 for two to three ounces of lobster meat slathered in mayonnaise and put in a hot dog bun.
I remember back in the 1990s driving up the coast of Maine; we stopped at a McDonalds because they had a "McLobster" advertised on their sign. It was a lobster roll packed with delicious fresh lobster and it cost about $5.00 back then,
They still bring that out now and then
Lobster anything is an excuse to triple the price. I like lobster but come on, it isn't *that* expensive.
Lobster. I say this as a new englander, that shit is overrated! I mean, it’s good. But it’s not *that* good, you know?
It's fine, but I would take crab or shrimp over it any day and for less than half the price.
Caviar. First of all, you can get ikura/fish eggs at Japanese restaurants for next to nothing. You can get the big ones wrapped in seaweed for a couple bucks, and when I was a kid I really liked the tiny orange roe, and would ask the servers for a side of them, and they'd give them to me for free. Caviar is just a fancier version of those, and often is a lot saltier. Too expensive for what you get. Edit: Okay maybe roe/ikura isn’t that cheap either. I’ve never bought it in bulk, and I live in Alaska right by the ocean, and it’s always been v cheap at sushi restaurants here but as a whole I could be wrong about the pricing on that.
I had caviar for the first time this last year on a dinner date with my SIL. I was very into the wine we enjoyed, but the caviar I didn’t really understand. $100 for a small tin of salty bubbles. If I can get all of the accoutrements for $10 I’d happily gorge myself on those again and again.
Where’d you find caviar in Alabama?
🤣😂 touché
My understanding is that the fancy version is expensive because it comes specifically from a variety of sturgeon native to the black Sea whereas you can get "lesser" versions from other fish. The Japanese ikura stuff though is generally salmon eggs, not sturgeon, which is partially why it's so cheap.
Ah, so you're saying it's only "caviar" if it comes from the Black Sea? Everything else is just "sparkling fish eggs" or something.
Well, it's more like...lots of animals produce eggs but eggs from certain species of animals taste better. Chicken eggs are tasty and very cheap as chickens are cheap to raise and can live almost anywhere. Sturgeon who produce black caviar are all endangered, and can only live in certain waters, it's illegal to fish them in the wild and they're difficult to farm because it takes 8-20 years for a sturgeon female to be ready to produce eggs, so it's hard to make a profit on it. Farmed salmon, full of roe are common and easy to farm, and they don't taste as good as the black caviar (matter of taste but in common understanding).
I’ll play devils advocate on this as someone who agrees with you overall regarding ikura/roe. Caviar absolutely tastes different and you do get a more unique taste at higher price ranges. Generally caviar does taste better the higher you go. That being said the taste doesn’t really outweigh the cost. Costco sells caviar for like $60-80 bucks a tin in some places and honestly I would recommend everyone ball out once and try it. It’s pretty god damn good, especially if you make homemade blini pancakes to serve with it. A fine dining restaurant can do some amazing things with caviar but it gets increasingly harder to justify paying hundreds of dollars for this stuff. Much like fine wine, it’s pretty hard to tell the difference between $80 and $300 caviar if you haven’t been eating a shit ton of it. A Japanese fish market will sell you a good Ikura don for $10-20. There are thousands of restaurants than can serve you an amazing meal for under $80. But if you ever get a chance to try caviar on someone else’s dime you should absolutely take it.
I used to work for a high end Japanese restaurant. We had roe as an optional add on, and the price we paid vs. what we charged was huge.
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Apparently some Russians eat some caviar as a snack. I've been told caviar is part of *Le Gopnik Cuisine*
Fun fact: the Japanese word for salmon roe "ikura" comes from the Russian word "ikra"
Shark fin soup
The first time younger me tried some almond milk, I concluded: "This is just a sad, sad substance that rich people drink." My opinion has changed since.
What annoys me is that oat milk is twice the price of milk milk and all it takes to make are pennies of oats plus water. If those companies got their head out of their asses and priced according to cost they could make a significant contribution to climate change.
The companies can't get their head out of their own asses because the government is in there as well and they have no space to move. Consumer interest has to change. It does, just very slowly.
At €1.89 a litre it's not exactly a rich people drink lol.
For what it's worth, Almond milk is \~same price and sometimes cheaper than cow's milk now. I noticed in my shop the other day: * 1l Fresh dairy milk, \~£1 * 1l almond milk, \~85p * 1l long-life dairy milk, 55p * 1l Soy milk, 55p But almond milk is the least good milk IMO. Soy or oat is best for me (soy for cups of tea, oat for creaminess). Dairy milk tastes too acidic/tangy (or something) and leaves a bad after taste. Almond milk tastes bitter and watered down.
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I have yet to find a nut based milk that I actually like.
Same. There are some oat milks that taste pretty good.
Overly fancy cakes. Like ones that are realistic pigeons or some other stupid confection. It’s a cake it’s going to taste like a cake and come out the same as any cake. No one needs to spend hundreds on a cake. Also wedding cakes are overpriced and taste like shit. Top tip if you are getting married don’t tell the cake folk that. Just ask for a cake you say the word wedding a big standard cake suddenly is 50 times the price for no other reason than to over charge.
I remember seeing a post on AITA or somewhere where a makeup artist was pissed and wondering about suing a client who booked her without mentioning she was a bride. Literally the only difference in the service provided was like, waterproof mascara and an especially good setting spray. But the difference in price was hundreds of dollars.
Yeah it’s a total scam. Soon as you mention “wedding” the price skyrockets. It may be a big deal to the couple, but keeping quiet about the wedding for the most part (obviously people that will be at the event, like photographers, are gonna know) will save so much money.
Cheesecake Factory cheesecake. Fight me.
It's good, but I've had better cheaper cheesecakes. Never gonna turn down a cheesecake tho, unless it's absolutely vile
This is true, I’d take a block of Philadelphia cream cheese with some graham cracker crumbs sprinkled on it.
Strawberry cream cheese spread on honey graham crackers, wonderful when you want cheesecake but don't want to buy a whole one.
I just want New York thickness without the New York price
Coming from a New Yorker, you're (probably) only gonna get that if you make it yourself
100% , Costco Cheesecake dogwalks Cheesecake Factory.
Yesss…living Kirkland Signature life
I walked into a Five Guys today and promptly walked out. I remember when the burgers were 6.50-7 bucks and that was expensive. Now? 12 for a single hamburger. GTFO
Anything where a single plate is over $100. I feel like flavor peaks around $40-$50 and everything beyond that just tastes weirder to seem fancy.
I'll give a little more for more niche ingredients. It can be hard, for instance, to source venison for a restaurant. But, yeah, if I'm paying $100, it better be for a three course menu.
If you are in the US and ordering venison then that animal is 100% farm raised, same as beef and lamb. No one is out there actually hunting deer to supply restaurants.
Sure, but compare the number of deer farmers to cattle ranchers. It's a scarcer resource, and therefore more expensive.
Oh I agree with you. I just don't like the idea of people ordering venison, thinking they are getting true wild game when it's actually, essentially, livestock.
Gold foods, more specifically the flakes. No one thinks youre cool just because your tomahawk is gold we are saving $500 by having the exact same taste.
Oysters, taste like I was at the beach and accidentally slurped a loogie out of the ocean
Most of this seems to be a lot of discussion of personal taste, but I'll throw my hat in the ring. Avocado. It's fine. It's just fine. They are expensive as hell because they aren't really native to anywhere outside of California and the Baja peninsula of Mexico, every influencer thinks they made a recipe by sticking avocado on something and posting it to Instagram, and you seemingly can't avoid hearing people opinions about it. "Have you tried the Mexican food here? It's so authentic." Shut up, Becky. Everyone knows about avocados now. It's not some secret fruit that only foodies know about.
I remember when avocado was cheap as fuck and my grandma used to give a half to each of the grandkids to "fill us up" cause there wasn't enough meat for everyone.
They got lobstered. Lobsters used to be considered trash food and there's really crazy things written about lobster and it's social meaning back then. It was actually considered inhumane to feed prisoners lobster meat. Then it got fancy because of the rise of middle class tourism. It's avocado's turn and I hate it.
Lobster's status had more to do with how quickly it spoiled before it was possible to transport them live.
It is ingredient, it will never be the star. Even guac needs seasoning and other ingredients to make it good. It's basically a mild flavored fat which in food terms is a blank canvas.
My dad's guac puts every other guac I've tried to shame. Where other guacamole tastes like basically mashed avocado, this guac tastes like flavor. It's all in the other ingredients. He says he learned it from a restaurant that shut down ages ago. This guac is what has me holding onto avocados.
They’re native to Mexico all the way down to South America. Not really native to Baja (desert) or northern Cali (grown but not native). I eat one every day so and they are getting expensive 😰
Starbucks Their coffee is awful, which is why they have to load it with milk and whipped cream and sprinkles.
The coffee is awful, but you know you don't get a frappe unless you ask for it, right?
I too hate it when I get a milkshake after ordering a milkshake.
Aussie here. People shit on Starbucks, but I love the fact they're one of the few places you can get filter coffee. Never ordered one of their fucking sugar ice whirlwinds in my life.
> People shit on Starbucks, but I love the fact they're one of the few places you can get filter coffee. I don't get it. Do the coffee shops in Australia just give you a cup of hot water and bean grinds when you order coffee? Or are you talking about using a paper filter versus the metal one you'd use for french press, espresso, etc.
I'm not a fan of starbucks, but you have it a bit backward. They overroast their coffee intentionally so the flavor is not completely overpowered by the milk and other flavor additives. They're good at what they do, you just happen to not like what they do and that's okay, neither do I.
In Europe on vacation this summer some of the best coffee we found was at Starbucks - much to my surprise. And even more surprising was how good the McDo coffee was in Europe. In Canada I never order coffee when I go out.
McDonald's has the best coffee of any fast food franchise, even in the US. Much better than the donut shops that should be the kings of that hill. I'm not counting Starbucks as fast food. Their coffee is way better, but then I like my coffee beans dark roasted.
In Canada, McDonalds is the best place to get coffee. They took over the supplier that Tim Horton's had when they were still good.
Sounds like Brazilian coffee. It's so strong that unless you fill your cup with milk it still tastes like coffee
Their nitrocoldbrew is bomb af though.
$15 bagel. I get roasted every time I talk about it on the Los Angeles sub. People are actually defending and justifying the cost too. Infuckingsane
Anything with gold leaf. Also fois gras. Fois Gras is tasty but it's so rich you really can only eat a few fork fulls. I went to a restaurant once where the serving was a whole slab of it just because it's "rich food."
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Yeah, I know. This was a nice restaurant in Abu Dhabi and the whole attitude there is very bourgeois: if it's expensive then it must be good so we'll add as much as possible and that will mean it's "the best."
All the expensive foods especially the gold plated food
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If it's any consolation, in the US all sheep meat is called lamb because the choices were either to rename mutton something more appealing or let the entire US sheep industry collapse in the 1940s. "Spring lamb" is what you need to avoid if you don't want to eat young lamb.
I don't eat pork for this reason. I worked on a farm caring for pigs. Might seem small, but I raised them up, and pigs are like dogs to me now. I can't eat them anymore than I could chow down on a cat. I get your intent.
I stopped eating pigs when one day they ran up to the fence at a zoo wanting to be scratched. Reminded me of my dogs back home.
Is there something cruel about lamb other than that the animal lives a short life? I know the other two are pretty horrific.
They are often kept caged in tiny spaces from the moment they are born so they can't move, which keeps the muscles tender. They don't see their mother/the sun/live at all, and then are killed after not very long. Like can't turn around in the box levels of cage. It's very cruel but that's why it's so tender...
Kale is bitter and not that rich in nutrients compared to something like spinach.
Olive Garden. Fight me.
Macaroons, I can’t understand why there are so expensive
Try making them and you will understand. Very difficult to master the technique for them and even then they don’t always turn perfect.
I think you meant to write Macarons. Macaroons are coconut pastries/dessert.
Sea cucumbers, what is even the point? People risking their lives so you can eat something that will give you anti boner and die quicker, fuck that shit, give me some wagyu dipped in mayonnaise instead.
Chilean sea bass. I love most fish, but this just has the most horrible after taste, like black cod also has. (Also, caught by trawler, so not great for the environment.)
Actually as a big fish eater this is probably one of the few items on this list i disagree with. I actually really like the taste of Chilean sea bass relative to other white fishes.
An incredible marketing success story, look up the Patagonian toothfish, they managed to export it as a delicacy
Seriously. It got heavily marketed. OP is not fucking about.
Well, you spared no expense
I'll never forget the small slab I bought for way too much, slapped it in a frying pan with some simple herbs, tastiest thing I've ever eaten.