I think that restaurants have always had an understated emphasis on turnover. People who sit for a while without ordering anything are bad for business, because they're taking the place of paying customers. With so many restaurants closing because of the pandemic, there's probably greater demand on the places that are left. But I remember restaurants used to seem focused on making the dining experience damn near unpleasant -- playing such loud music that you could barely hear the people you were sitting with, for example (I pretty much will not go to a bar in the evening because of this).
There have always been tiers of restaurants. You have your local deli, your fast food joints and diners, stuff like that, and then fancier stuff -- sit down restairants we used to call them. They included family steakhouses and the Italian red sauce joints you were talking about. Then you had ordinary fancy. Even small towns might have had one place like it, the sort of place Mom and Dad would go to for their anniversary dinner, where a man wouldn't be able to go in without a jacket and tie. Those were the only local places that really had a chef in the Escoffier sense of the term and he'd usually be a part-owner of the place. Then you get the really fancy, haute cuisine places with chefs that would appear in guidebooks and newspapers. Finally, the creme de la creme were places that were either Michelin stars or some equivalent -- think Delmonicos, Sardi's or the 21 Club.
But the industry has changed very rapidly. Costs have risen and the way people buy and consume food has changed. One of my grandparents' favorite restaurants was a steakhouse in Greenwich, CT called Manero's. When they closed in 2006, it was a combination of high costs (The NYT reported that a filet mignon dinner in the 1970s including appetizers, sides, dessert and coffee was $5.95 but by then it was $30), competition and one of the big things was a butcher shop where they sold meat they didn't use in the food, but people had started being able to get quality meat at grocery stores.
It was the same story with other steakhouses, like Hilltop in Saugus, Mass or my local Sirloin Saloon in Rutland, Vermont. Or chains like the Ponderosa. Steak just got too expensive and income from other sources wasn't keeping up.
Much like the middle class itself, dining out is hollowing.
Oh man, I remember the Sirloin Saloon! Yeah, I think one of the under-discussed reasons for that kind of basic but nice steakhouse/American/bar and grill place disappearing is that supermarkets got really amazing. You can buy better ingredients than those restaurants ever served for a fraction of the cost. And there wasn't that much skill or technique in steaks/chops/fish fillets.
I think much of this is a shift in cuisine trends. It used to be that cheap places were Italian, diners serving burgers, sandwiches and pancakes, or fancier "home style" American food places. The low end in price today consists of Asian soup or noodle places (ramen, pho, thai) as well as fast-casual and "food hall" type settings which offer seating, but with no table service, a more limited menu, and sometimes ordering from a screen rather than a cashier. In addition to being generally cheaper, these offer a way to escape the tip or service charge.
The old-style cheapish Italian or American places are still around - one family-owned Italian place I know from 30 years ago in the suburbs recently opened a new downtown location. But they face a market-positioning problem: Olive Garden and Applebee's offer a scientifically-engineered hyper-efficient version of the same food and experience, while aesthetically slicker places with flashier marketing ("expensive, aesthetically trendy, mediocre") are able to set higher price points for the same food, driving up equilibrium costs and rents.
And then, there are a lot more cuisines available today than 30 years ago. There are plenty of immigrant-run Asian or Indian places in the suburbs which reliably offer good value for money IMO, especially if you aren't inclined to try your hand at making Ethiopian or Uygur food at home.
As for "lingering" at tables - that's just a cultural thing. Go to Spain or Italy and it would be considered unbelievably rude for a waiter to rush you out, or bring you the check when you didn't ask for it, unless they specifically advised you beforehand that they needed the table at a certain point.
The last bit - yeah, absolutely. But in the original piece I raise the question of how the heck those restaurants actually turn a profit at all. Really curious about that. If American restaurants are barely making it, how are European restaurants, with better food, lower prices, no tip, and less table turnover, making it?
You're right that the kind of dining experience I'm recalling still exists but with other cuisines. Maybe my view is a little skewed because we rarely went to chains. Never once stepped foot in an Olive Garden! I did kind of like TGI Friday's but it was a rare treat.
I think the restaurant business sucks everywhere. The perception we have of value in the EU is probably due to salaries being lower there: the average annual salary in Italy is less than half that of the USA, and even lower compared to major US coastal metros. A 20eur meal feels to you like you're paying 20 bucks, but after adjusting for the currency and wages it feels more like $45 to them. Also, Europeans face far lower out-of-pocket costs for certain things (health insurance, student loans, transport, child care in some cases) so it wouldn't surprise me if they spend a meaningfully larger share of their income on eating out, overall.
I wonder whether increased expectations of restaurant food might be built on increased expectations of - and better, wider experience of - what we're able to find at the supermarket and prepare at home? If I can get all the ingredients for, say, a really good pot of ramen or pho at home (and I can, in a single grocery), then it's going to require even more of an "experience" to make spending the time, effort, and money to go eat it somewhere else worth it.
E.g., I'll cheerfully go grab the occasional fish fry down the road at the VFW, because I hate everything having to do with deep-frying. But I make my own Italian sauces, can get imported pasta and quality sausage - even Olive Garden doesn't cut it for me anymore unless I'm traveling.
I think so too - I wrote a piece awhile ago about that. I can buy sushi grade tuna and salmon, aged USDA Prime steaks, beautiful meat and fish, some obscure vegetables, lots of "ethnic" groceries, etc. In like, 10 minutes at everyday stores. I never really see this remarked on, but I do think it greatly ate into the whole value proposition of simple middle-tier restaurants. It's just very hard to pay up for food that's not hard to make better at home
Yep. There are whole categories of food I won't order at a restaurant anymore because what's the point? I can do a darn good imitation at home for a fraction of the price.
So when I eat out at something more expensive than a deli or noodle shop I'm either ordering stuff that's more complicated/technique-heavy than I know or want to deal with or has interesting ingredients that I can't easily get (or don't know how to cook with) unless I happen to have a hankering for some comfort food and don't have the time or energy to make it (hello, local Italian red sauce joint!)
This is an important part of this phenomenon because it disproves "Millennials are too fussy about food" or whatever. It's not a preference, per se. It's just...a change. You can't really do anything about it.
Good point. I'm a Boomer/GenX cusp who grew up with very little exposure to world cuisines. My daughter, on the other hand, will cheerfully try anything and regularly stretches my boundaries.
I think that restaurants have always had an understated emphasis on turnover. People who sit for a while without ordering anything are bad for business, because they're taking the place of paying customers. With so many restaurants closing because of the pandemic, there's probably greater demand on the places that are left. But I remember restaurants used to seem focused on making the dining experience damn near unpleasant -- playing such loud music that you could barely hear the people you were sitting with, for example (I pretty much will not go to a bar in the evening because of this).
There have always been tiers of restaurants. You have your local deli, your fast food joints and diners, stuff like that, and then fancier stuff -- sit down restairants we used to call them. They included family steakhouses and the Italian red sauce joints you were talking about. Then you had ordinary fancy. Even small towns might have had one place like it, the sort of place Mom and Dad would go to for their anniversary dinner, where a man wouldn't be able to go in without a jacket and tie. Those were the only local places that really had a chef in the Escoffier sense of the term and he'd usually be a part-owner of the place. Then you get the really fancy, haute cuisine places with chefs that would appear in guidebooks and newspapers. Finally, the creme de la creme were places that were either Michelin stars or some equivalent -- think Delmonicos, Sardi's or the 21 Club.
But the industry has changed very rapidly. Costs have risen and the way people buy and consume food has changed. One of my grandparents' favorite restaurants was a steakhouse in Greenwich, CT called Manero's. When they closed in 2006, it was a combination of high costs (The NYT reported that a filet mignon dinner in the 1970s including appetizers, sides, dessert and coffee was $5.95 but by then it was $30), competition and one of the big things was a butcher shop where they sold meat they didn't use in the food, but people had started being able to get quality meat at grocery stores.
It was the same story with other steakhouses, like Hilltop in Saugus, Mass or my local Sirloin Saloon in Rutland, Vermont. Or chains like the Ponderosa. Steak just got too expensive and income from other sources wasn't keeping up.
Much like the middle class itself, dining out is hollowing.
Oh man, I remember the Sirloin Saloon! Yeah, I think one of the under-discussed reasons for that kind of basic but nice steakhouse/American/bar and grill place disappearing is that supermarkets got really amazing. You can buy better ingredients than those restaurants ever served for a fraction of the cost. And there wasn't that much skill or technique in steaks/chops/fish fillets.
I think much of this is a shift in cuisine trends. It used to be that cheap places were Italian, diners serving burgers, sandwiches and pancakes, or fancier "home style" American food places. The low end in price today consists of Asian soup or noodle places (ramen, pho, thai) as well as fast-casual and "food hall" type settings which offer seating, but with no table service, a more limited menu, and sometimes ordering from a screen rather than a cashier. In addition to being generally cheaper, these offer a way to escape the tip or service charge.
The old-style cheapish Italian or American places are still around - one family-owned Italian place I know from 30 years ago in the suburbs recently opened a new downtown location. But they face a market-positioning problem: Olive Garden and Applebee's offer a scientifically-engineered hyper-efficient version of the same food and experience, while aesthetically slicker places with flashier marketing ("expensive, aesthetically trendy, mediocre") are able to set higher price points for the same food, driving up equilibrium costs and rents.
And then, there are a lot more cuisines available today than 30 years ago. There are plenty of immigrant-run Asian or Indian places in the suburbs which reliably offer good value for money IMO, especially if you aren't inclined to try your hand at making Ethiopian or Uygur food at home.
As for "lingering" at tables - that's just a cultural thing. Go to Spain or Italy and it would be considered unbelievably rude for a waiter to rush you out, or bring you the check when you didn't ask for it, unless they specifically advised you beforehand that they needed the table at a certain point.
The last bit - yeah, absolutely. But in the original piece I raise the question of how the heck those restaurants actually turn a profit at all. Really curious about that. If American restaurants are barely making it, how are European restaurants, with better food, lower prices, no tip, and less table turnover, making it?
You're right that the kind of dining experience I'm recalling still exists but with other cuisines. Maybe my view is a little skewed because we rarely went to chains. Never once stepped foot in an Olive Garden! I did kind of like TGI Friday's but it was a rare treat.
I think the restaurant business sucks everywhere. The perception we have of value in the EU is probably due to salaries being lower there: the average annual salary in Italy is less than half that of the USA, and even lower compared to major US coastal metros. A 20eur meal feels to you like you're paying 20 bucks, but after adjusting for the currency and wages it feels more like $45 to them. Also, Europeans face far lower out-of-pocket costs for certain things (health insurance, student loans, transport, child care in some cases) so it wouldn't surprise me if they spend a meaningfully larger share of their income on eating out, overall.
I wonder whether increased expectations of restaurant food might be built on increased expectations of - and better, wider experience of - what we're able to find at the supermarket and prepare at home? If I can get all the ingredients for, say, a really good pot of ramen or pho at home (and I can, in a single grocery), then it's going to require even more of an "experience" to make spending the time, effort, and money to go eat it somewhere else worth it.
E.g., I'll cheerfully go grab the occasional fish fry down the road at the VFW, because I hate everything having to do with deep-frying. But I make my own Italian sauces, can get imported pasta and quality sausage - even Olive Garden doesn't cut it for me anymore unless I'm traveling.
I think so too - I wrote a piece awhile ago about that. I can buy sushi grade tuna and salmon, aged USDA Prime steaks, beautiful meat and fish, some obscure vegetables, lots of "ethnic" groceries, etc. In like, 10 minutes at everyday stores. I never really see this remarked on, but I do think it greatly ate into the whole value proposition of simple middle-tier restaurants. It's just very hard to pay up for food that's not hard to make better at home
Yep. There are whole categories of food I won't order at a restaurant anymore because what's the point? I can do a darn good imitation at home for a fraction of the price.
So when I eat out at something more expensive than a deli or noodle shop I'm either ordering stuff that's more complicated/technique-heavy than I know or want to deal with or has interesting ingredients that I can't easily get (or don't know how to cook with) unless I happen to have a hankering for some comfort food and don't have the time or energy to make it (hello, local Italian red sauce joint!)
(For the record, I'm an (old) GenX.)
This is an important part of this phenomenon because it disproves "Millennials are too fussy about food" or whatever. It's not a preference, per se. It's just...a change. You can't really do anything about it.
Good point. I'm a Boomer/GenX cusp who grew up with very little exposure to world cuisines. My daughter, on the other hand, will cheerfully try anything and regularly stretches my boundaries.
(but when she's home for a visit, at least one Chicago-style dog is required. Preferably from a walk-up stand on the corner.)