As a fellow home cook, I find that "unlocking the secret" of a recipe doesn't take away the magic for me. Rather, it gives me a sense of appreciation for what goes into good food—the technique, the selection of ingredients, the balancing of flavors, the deft seasoning. Knowing that the quality of the food I produce can vary depending on my energy, mood, or time constraints, I am also in awe of cooks and restaurants that can reliably execute with the same level of quality every day. But perhaps here's a difference: when I go out to eat, I'm not looking to be impressed; I'm looking to have a great meal, and I'm grateful for the effort that goes into it, even if I could have made it at home.
That's a good way to think of it! I think by "impressed" I mean anything from impressed down to simply satisfied, though. Maybe I've just had a handful of poor restaurant experiences and it colors my view. I do enjoy restaurants as a treat that do something I can't do - my weakness is sophisticated sushi, i.e. more than the salmon and tuna I can slice up at home. My problem comes in when 90 percent of everyday sushi joints serve worse salmon and tuna than I can buy at a local fish store we're lucky to have. I think I'd say being a good cook makes you both frugal and discerning wrt food.
Whole Foods is my closest grocery store, so it's occasionally hard to feel frugal when I look at the receipt. :) But, I'd agree it did indeed feel for a time, around 2021/2, that the experience of going to a restaurant had declined noticeably...poorer service, lower quality, more expensive. I imagine some of that was related to supply chain issues and labor shortages, which seem to have resolved; the experiences we've had in the last two years or so have largely been positive. My main contention with most restaurants we visit these days is that the music is too loud!
I think this is true about many things once you develop a skill. Like I just can't enjoy reading for pleasure as much now that I've written books myself, at least not in the same genres. I can perceive the machinery clanking along too clearly. And when something is less than perfect, now I know that the writer started with a blank page and had infinite choices, so why didn't they make a better choice?
As someone who, I assume, loves the concept of third places, including restaurants, do you grapple with the tension between cooking for yourself (and the savings) versus supporting businesses that add considerably to sense of place, urbanity, and all the things that quality independent restaurants bring to communities? Or, in the end, do you still go out plenty, making it a non-issue?
For my part, I feel a responsibility to patronize businesses whose presence makes me feel more positively about where I live. Obviously everyone has to live within their budget, and living modestly and saving is a critical virtue. Still, I bristle just a bit when I hear about the most strident commitments some people have to only eating at home when they do have the disposable income to eat out from time to time.
Hmm. *Sort of.* Not really, when it comes down to it. Because once you realize you can eat better for less, the bloom is off the rose. It's well and good to support local businesses as a sort of side effect of actually wanting to go to them, but once it becomes a chore it's very, very hard to justify. It's sort of like how if public transit is bad and you have to be an intellectual supporter of it to use it, you've already lost.
Also - honestly - despite loving Northern Virginia, I'm not sure what my "community" is. I shop at whatever supermarket I prefer in whichever town it happens to be in, same with restaurants, vets, etc. I don't have a Main Street town with a mayor and city limits where you have a sense of belonging and obligation.
This is a really good question, though. It is something I think about as an urbanist.
I don't know northern Virginia that well, and my mental image of it is a relentlessly suburban collection of shopping plazas and housing developments. I can see how the "obligation" wouldn't be deeply felt there.
We moved from a big metro area to Fort Wayne, Ind. in 2021. The only reason we were willing to move to Fort Wayne (besides an appealing job opportunity) is because the city was taking big swings in terms of redevelopment, and an interesting ecosystem of independent restaurants was emerging. Now that we live here, I feel intensely interested in the continued success of this ecosystem and try to support it is a much as I can within the constraints of budget, kids, and time. This support is more intellectualized than organic, I will admit.
It is a pretty spread-out suburban landscape. It's interesting and diverse, but it's still very spread out. My hometown in NJ was different - we lived outside an actual small town, and we knew the business owners on Main Street and all that. We're undergoing some big redevelopment projects and a lot of new business openings, and to this day I feel a sense of belonging to that town's local economy and wanting to support it (though most of the restaurants in town are a miss for me - I think we're just too small, and a bit old-fashioned in taste, to support truly great restaurants). I kind of miss that feeling and that's one of the few things I prefer about having lived in NJ.
In one way, it gets worse. At 79 and a half, it’s more trouble to go out than to cook, so that’s what we usually do.
In another way, it gets better. It’s just so nice to eat something I didn’t cook! Not because I didn’t have to do the work, but whoever cooked it is likely going to use a different flavour profile than I would, have different opinions about doneness and the like, a different sense of what individual dishes go together to make a meal. I enjoy all those changes, even if sometimes I think my way is superior.
Don't worry, once you have kids, your standards will lower again and you'll learn how to savor a saliva-soaked third of a grilled cheese sandwich. It will taste good to you. I am not being sarcastic.
How do you enjoy paying 5X the ingredients cost for a worse result than you could do at home? Easy - reach mealtime so tired and/or worn out that having someone else do the jobs (the prep, the cooking, the cleanup) is a blessing. Or, as Elizabeth said, you experience a different sense of what a dish, a meal can be. Even a good cook can respect the efforts of another.
Still, knowledge, understanding of cooking don't shut off when you sit down at someone else's table. It's natural, once you've developed the skills and knowledge of....anything, to critique another's expression of that skill. The counterpoint is that it's also natural to miss the state of ignorance where you could enjoy buffet food without reservation. That's the burden of acquiring knowledge - you can't unsee it, there's no going back to the primordial state.
Since it sounds like acquiring the skills and understanding of food is a point of pride, of satisfaction for you it also seems natural that you want to USE it. Of course you'd rather cook at home; doing it brings the pleasure of creating good food and the pleasure of sharing it. I envy your for that. I can cook, but I've never had flair for it or taken joy from it.
This is why I cannot eat at 99% of Italian restaurants in Australia. The only exception is a couple of fine dining restaurants that my dad treats us to once a year and they are FINE dining. The local ‘Pizzeria’ with overcooked, over salted spag bol and *shudder* ham and pineapple ‘pizza’? No thanks. I’ll make it at home properly starting with soffritto and full of proper love!
I have no problem with cheap eats in cuisines I have not mastered or have much experience in. I’m hopeless at stir fry, and will happily pay 3x as much for a hot, Thai stir fry that is not limp and soggy like mine seem to be.
That's an interesting perspective. I notice that when eating out, I tend to pick the kinds of food I *wouldn't* make myself. And as a parent, it always stings to pay restaurant prices for PBJ or Kraft macaroni.
But there are foods that I struggle to cook to my standards (steak, pizza), or I hate the hassle involved (anything fried, anything with lots of little fussy details). For those, even "not so good" is better than I would make, so I enjoy it.
As others have pointed out, some of the enjoyment of going out to eat is simply knowing that someone else is doing the work. I never appreciated that aspect until I started cooking for a family every day.
I dunno, to be honest I don’t feel this. Well, I do to an extent. I’m an excellent cook, but I will truly enjoy food that is only kind of good. It can’t be actively bad, and there are some things that are truly pointless (random examples: fajitas, hamburgers). But as long as it’s something not worth my trouble to make at home, I will enjoy it just fine.
I've long suspected that if you want to keep enjoying something, it's best to learn a bit about it, but not too much. You don't want to rip the curtain wide open and remove all the mystique and magic, as you say. If you like wine, be wary of taking some sommelier courses because you'll never be able to enjoy regular plonk again. The same goes for craft beer, or single origin coffee, or bread making, etc.
Addison has unleashed a savory topic here. Nothing gets us nattering like the subject of food. When I'm on the road, I am looking for cuisine unmatched at home (for many reasons). Lambert's Home of the Throwed Rolls, Sikeston, MO, is not fussy or pretentious. It's an Ozark hillbilly dining experience (if that attracts your curiosity) and a legendary destination for the Sunday dinner family and RV vagabonds: https://throwedrolls.com/menu. But if that reputation wouldn't entice you to pull over, you might consider Ole's Big Game Steakhouse, Paxton, Nebraska, right there by the Union Pacific tracks and close to traces of the historic Morman Trail. I recommend the ribeye, sine qua non for succulence: https://throwedrolls.com/menu.
I 100% agree with this. My husband and I consider ourselves to be pretty good home cooks, we enjoy putting in the effort to feed our family well and share it with others. To find a restaurant with semi-decent food (I.e., not drowned in soybean oil or HFCS) requires spending a TON of money for local-farm-to-table-etc-etc. When all is said and done, we spend about $6/lb on our local, know-our-farmer, grass-fed, butchered-to-our-request beef. It’s just really, really hard for me to spend 5x that at a restaurant - and that’s just the menu price, without drinks or tax/tip/etc. The “experience”, which presently includes sitting next to a wiggly and talks-too-much-to-eat 6-year-old, eating salads without dressing because soybean oil, and being hovered over by servers who just want to turn the table as quickly as possible, just isn’t worth it. I’d rather just make extra meatballs for the freezer so that “emergency dinner” is available when needed.
My parents, though, (early 70s) love to eat out. They are at (chain) restaurants all the time. When we’re with them, they always suggest going out, and we usually decline. I’d honestly rather do the work of cooking at my mother’s house. But I’ve noticed this among others of their generation, as well. I mean, okay, it’s easy to meet up at wherever, or order takeout, and then everybody can have what they want and nobody has to cook. That’s cool, I guess, except that the food is expensive and not really that good, and *everyone acknowledges that*. It’s strange to me how *what is actually being purchased* has almost no bearing on the decision to purchase.
As a pretty good home cook, I look for things on a menu that I don’t normally make at home. That allows me to enjoy someone else’s cooking, since I often end up liking my own version better. Sometimes that ends up inspiring me to try a new recipe at home.
Of course there are times where I just don’t feel like cooking because I’m too exhausted, as someone mentioned above. I might still be critical and think how I would have done it differently, but the meal is still enjoyable because I didn’t have to do the work myself.
A couple of ideas for you to add some wrinkles to your question:
1. Remember that not all restaurants are the same. In my neck of Canadian suburbia, where chain restaurants thrive, they aren't interested in employing chefs who hone their craft. So you get "it'll do" kind of cooking. But that also opens an opportunity to seek out and spend money at restaurants that are interested in their craft, and employ chefs that cook better than you and I. Those are my favourite establishments, and I personally am constantly keeping track of those places.
2. Most cuisine have dishes that are considered home cooking and dishes that aren't, usually because they are too time-intensive or use specialized equipment that is impractical to get in a home. For me personally, even though I do Chinese cuisine on a home wok, I will never have a wok burner hot enough for the smoky "breath of the wok" flavour that you get from a good Chinese restaurant. So there is a role for restaurants despite my cooking expertise.
Personally, having been in your shoes for a while, I quite like having higher standards. It means I'm more in control of my family's daily diet, and also allows me to support local places that may be a bit pricier, instead of franchises that are little better than the frozen food section of grocery stores.
As a fellow home cook, I find that "unlocking the secret" of a recipe doesn't take away the magic for me. Rather, it gives me a sense of appreciation for what goes into good food—the technique, the selection of ingredients, the balancing of flavors, the deft seasoning. Knowing that the quality of the food I produce can vary depending on my energy, mood, or time constraints, I am also in awe of cooks and restaurants that can reliably execute with the same level of quality every day. But perhaps here's a difference: when I go out to eat, I'm not looking to be impressed; I'm looking to have a great meal, and I'm grateful for the effort that goes into it, even if I could have made it at home.
That's a good way to think of it! I think by "impressed" I mean anything from impressed down to simply satisfied, though. Maybe I've just had a handful of poor restaurant experiences and it colors my view. I do enjoy restaurants as a treat that do something I can't do - my weakness is sophisticated sushi, i.e. more than the salmon and tuna I can slice up at home. My problem comes in when 90 percent of everyday sushi joints serve worse salmon and tuna than I can buy at a local fish store we're lucky to have. I think I'd say being a good cook makes you both frugal and discerning wrt food.
Whole Foods is my closest grocery store, so it's occasionally hard to feel frugal when I look at the receipt. :) But, I'd agree it did indeed feel for a time, around 2021/2, that the experience of going to a restaurant had declined noticeably...poorer service, lower quality, more expensive. I imagine some of that was related to supply chain issues and labor shortages, which seem to have resolved; the experiences we've had in the last two years or so have largely been positive. My main contention with most restaurants we visit these days is that the music is too loud!
I think this is true about many things once you develop a skill. Like I just can't enjoy reading for pleasure as much now that I've written books myself, at least not in the same genres. I can perceive the machinery clanking along too clearly. And when something is less than perfect, now I know that the writer started with a blank page and had infinite choices, so why didn't they make a better choice?
YES. Seeing behind the curtain takes away whatever it is that lets you get lost in the thing.
As someone who, I assume, loves the concept of third places, including restaurants, do you grapple with the tension between cooking for yourself (and the savings) versus supporting businesses that add considerably to sense of place, urbanity, and all the things that quality independent restaurants bring to communities? Or, in the end, do you still go out plenty, making it a non-issue?
For my part, I feel a responsibility to patronize businesses whose presence makes me feel more positively about where I live. Obviously everyone has to live within their budget, and living modestly and saving is a critical virtue. Still, I bristle just a bit when I hear about the most strident commitments some people have to only eating at home when they do have the disposable income to eat out from time to time.
Hmm. *Sort of.* Not really, when it comes down to it. Because once you realize you can eat better for less, the bloom is off the rose. It's well and good to support local businesses as a sort of side effect of actually wanting to go to them, but once it becomes a chore it's very, very hard to justify. It's sort of like how if public transit is bad and you have to be an intellectual supporter of it to use it, you've already lost.
Also - honestly - despite loving Northern Virginia, I'm not sure what my "community" is. I shop at whatever supermarket I prefer in whichever town it happens to be in, same with restaurants, vets, etc. I don't have a Main Street town with a mayor and city limits where you have a sense of belonging and obligation.
This is a really good question, though. It is something I think about as an urbanist.
I don't know northern Virginia that well, and my mental image of it is a relentlessly suburban collection of shopping plazas and housing developments. I can see how the "obligation" wouldn't be deeply felt there.
We moved from a big metro area to Fort Wayne, Ind. in 2021. The only reason we were willing to move to Fort Wayne (besides an appealing job opportunity) is because the city was taking big swings in terms of redevelopment, and an interesting ecosystem of independent restaurants was emerging. Now that we live here, I feel intensely interested in the continued success of this ecosystem and try to support it is a much as I can within the constraints of budget, kids, and time. This support is more intellectualized than organic, I will admit.
It is a pretty spread-out suburban landscape. It's interesting and diverse, but it's still very spread out. My hometown in NJ was different - we lived outside an actual small town, and we knew the business owners on Main Street and all that. We're undergoing some big redevelopment projects and a lot of new business openings, and to this day I feel a sense of belonging to that town's local economy and wanting to support it (though most of the restaurants in town are a miss for me - I think we're just too small, and a bit old-fashioned in taste, to support truly great restaurants). I kind of miss that feeling and that's one of the few things I prefer about having lived in NJ.
How dare you talk about cooking without coming to cook for me!
In one way, it gets worse. At 79 and a half, it’s more trouble to go out than to cook, so that’s what we usually do.
In another way, it gets better. It’s just so nice to eat something I didn’t cook! Not because I didn’t have to do the work, but whoever cooked it is likely going to use a different flavour profile than I would, have different opinions about doneness and the like, a different sense of what individual dishes go together to make a meal. I enjoy all those changes, even if sometimes I think my way is superior.
Don't worry, once you have kids, your standards will lower again and you'll learn how to savor a saliva-soaked third of a grilled cheese sandwich. It will taste good to you. I am not being sarcastic.
How do you enjoy paying 5X the ingredients cost for a worse result than you could do at home? Easy - reach mealtime so tired and/or worn out that having someone else do the jobs (the prep, the cooking, the cleanup) is a blessing. Or, as Elizabeth said, you experience a different sense of what a dish, a meal can be. Even a good cook can respect the efforts of another.
Still, knowledge, understanding of cooking don't shut off when you sit down at someone else's table. It's natural, once you've developed the skills and knowledge of....anything, to critique another's expression of that skill. The counterpoint is that it's also natural to miss the state of ignorance where you could enjoy buffet food without reservation. That's the burden of acquiring knowledge - you can't unsee it, there's no going back to the primordial state.
Since it sounds like acquiring the skills and understanding of food is a point of pride, of satisfaction for you it also seems natural that you want to USE it. Of course you'd rather cook at home; doing it brings the pleasure of creating good food and the pleasure of sharing it. I envy your for that. I can cook, but I've never had flair for it or taken joy from it.
This is why I cannot eat at 99% of Italian restaurants in Australia. The only exception is a couple of fine dining restaurants that my dad treats us to once a year and they are FINE dining. The local ‘Pizzeria’ with overcooked, over salted spag bol and *shudder* ham and pineapple ‘pizza’? No thanks. I’ll make it at home properly starting with soffritto and full of proper love!
I have no problem with cheap eats in cuisines I have not mastered or have much experience in. I’m hopeless at stir fry, and will happily pay 3x as much for a hot, Thai stir fry that is not limp and soggy like mine seem to be.
That's an interesting perspective. I notice that when eating out, I tend to pick the kinds of food I *wouldn't* make myself. And as a parent, it always stings to pay restaurant prices for PBJ or Kraft macaroni.
But there are foods that I struggle to cook to my standards (steak, pizza), or I hate the hassle involved (anything fried, anything with lots of little fussy details). For those, even "not so good" is better than I would make, so I enjoy it.
As others have pointed out, some of the enjoyment of going out to eat is simply knowing that someone else is doing the work. I never appreciated that aspect until I started cooking for a family every day.
I dunno, to be honest I don’t feel this. Well, I do to an extent. I’m an excellent cook, but I will truly enjoy food that is only kind of good. It can’t be actively bad, and there are some things that are truly pointless (random examples: fajitas, hamburgers). But as long as it’s something not worth my trouble to make at home, I will enjoy it just fine.
I've long suspected that if you want to keep enjoying something, it's best to learn a bit about it, but not too much. You don't want to rip the curtain wide open and remove all the mystique and magic, as you say. If you like wine, be wary of taking some sommelier courses because you'll never be able to enjoy regular plonk again. The same goes for craft beer, or single origin coffee, or bread making, etc.
Addison has unleashed a savory topic here. Nothing gets us nattering like the subject of food. When I'm on the road, I am looking for cuisine unmatched at home (for many reasons). Lambert's Home of the Throwed Rolls, Sikeston, MO, is not fussy or pretentious. It's an Ozark hillbilly dining experience (if that attracts your curiosity) and a legendary destination for the Sunday dinner family and RV vagabonds: https://throwedrolls.com/menu. But if that reputation wouldn't entice you to pull over, you might consider Ole's Big Game Steakhouse, Paxton, Nebraska, right there by the Union Pacific tracks and close to traces of the historic Morman Trail. I recommend the ribeye, sine qua non for succulence: https://throwedrolls.com/menu.
Ole's Big Game Steakhouse: https://olesbiggame.com/menu/
I 100% agree with this. My husband and I consider ourselves to be pretty good home cooks, we enjoy putting in the effort to feed our family well and share it with others. To find a restaurant with semi-decent food (I.e., not drowned in soybean oil or HFCS) requires spending a TON of money for local-farm-to-table-etc-etc. When all is said and done, we spend about $6/lb on our local, know-our-farmer, grass-fed, butchered-to-our-request beef. It’s just really, really hard for me to spend 5x that at a restaurant - and that’s just the menu price, without drinks or tax/tip/etc. The “experience”, which presently includes sitting next to a wiggly and talks-too-much-to-eat 6-year-old, eating salads without dressing because soybean oil, and being hovered over by servers who just want to turn the table as quickly as possible, just isn’t worth it. I’d rather just make extra meatballs for the freezer so that “emergency dinner” is available when needed.
My parents, though, (early 70s) love to eat out. They are at (chain) restaurants all the time. When we’re with them, they always suggest going out, and we usually decline. I’d honestly rather do the work of cooking at my mother’s house. But I’ve noticed this among others of their generation, as well. I mean, okay, it’s easy to meet up at wherever, or order takeout, and then everybody can have what they want and nobody has to cook. That’s cool, I guess, except that the food is expensive and not really that good, and *everyone acknowledges that*. It’s strange to me how *what is actually being purchased* has almost no bearing on the decision to purchase.
As a pretty good home cook, I look for things on a menu that I don’t normally make at home. That allows me to enjoy someone else’s cooking, since I often end up liking my own version better. Sometimes that ends up inspiring me to try a new recipe at home.
Of course there are times where I just don’t feel like cooking because I’m too exhausted, as someone mentioned above. I might still be critical and think how I would have done it differently, but the meal is still enjoyable because I didn’t have to do the work myself.
It’s all a matter of priorities!
A couple of ideas for you to add some wrinkles to your question:
1. Remember that not all restaurants are the same. In my neck of Canadian suburbia, where chain restaurants thrive, they aren't interested in employing chefs who hone their craft. So you get "it'll do" kind of cooking. But that also opens an opportunity to seek out and spend money at restaurants that are interested in their craft, and employ chefs that cook better than you and I. Those are my favourite establishments, and I personally am constantly keeping track of those places.
2. Most cuisine have dishes that are considered home cooking and dishes that aren't, usually because they are too time-intensive or use specialized equipment that is impractical to get in a home. For me personally, even though I do Chinese cuisine on a home wok, I will never have a wok burner hot enough for the smoky "breath of the wok" flavour that you get from a good Chinese restaurant. So there is a role for restaurants despite my cooking expertise.
Personally, having been in your shoes for a while, I quite like having higher standards. It means I'm more in control of my family's daily diet, and also allows me to support local places that may be a bit pricier, instead of franchises that are little better than the frozen food section of grocery stores.