Concomitantly, (Liar) you are a liar.
I have never been served such incomparably horrid food at wince-inducing prices as I have in London, and that perception is very common. That “myth,” isn’t.
Then what you really mean is that London food sucks, I wouldn’t know, I go there as little as possible. Stop the press, restaurant with no need to build any sense of loyalty with it’s customers uses the reputation of the city to fleece tourists with substandard, overpriced food. I’ve lost count of the number of places you could substitute for the name London.
If the food is shit, especially if it isn’t cheap, send it back, pay for your drink and go somewhere else.
When I was a waiter, I averaged more than $20.00/hr in tips.
I worked one summer as a waiter, mainly at two places - an independently owned German restaurant/beer garden, and a chain place specializing in lunches/desserts.
The biggest problem, it seemed to me, were the employees. Folks working in restaurants tended to be either in their mid-30s, and unable to find a better job, or 16-21, with little experience or responsibility. Many were dishonest. At the indie restaurant, the owner, a ~75 year old woman, had to be there pretty much all the time to keep watch. That meant she was there until ~midnight most Fridays and Saturdays.
It did not seem like an easy or pleasant way to make a living to me.
Also, having run a business, I agree with the poster who noted that you don’t have co-workers, only employees - that’s a key distinction and makes the experience less pleasant. But, probably the disparity between the type of person who owns a restaurant and the type who works there would make this owner-employee gap even bigger than in most businesses.
Lobster Ravioli on a bed of vegetable spaghetti in losbter bisque and chive oil.
Diver Scallops with dauphinoise potatoes and a brown shrimp butter.
Dark chocolate marquis with white chocolate sauce, cherry and kirsch ice cream and sesame snap.
all from a restaurant out in the Essex countryside near me just a few days ago, and about 30 quid a head, so a little above average. I like to describe myself as somewhat of a gastronome, and I know full well that whether i’m in London, or out in the countryside I can get a top quality meal with only a short drive.
Being told by Americans that food is shit in the UK is hilarious.
Food in the U.K. is expensive even after one adjusts for different tipping conventions. Service in the U.K. might be better if servers had more of an incentive to provide good service because of, you know, tips. The economics of the situtation imply that servers in a culture without tipping will be paid less and provide lower quality service, other things equal, than in one with tipping.
Culture without Tipping? If it hasn’t already been added to your bill like some places do, a 10% tip of the total of your meal, assuming they didn’t pour wine all over you is kind of expected.
Service wise I can’t say I’ve noticed any particular difference in service between the UK generally and, say, Spain or Italy… Or are we talking about London again?
As for being expensive, well the UK is expensive generally compared to most of Europe let alone the US, even when the £/$ exchange rate isn’t running at what it is at the moment. Scandanavia is the only place in the world I’ve ever been to and thought “Fuck me! How much?”
Rip into London all you want, but that shithole isn’t indicative, as much as it likes to think otherwise, of the rest of the country.
A few years ago I went to Buenos Aires and saw places all over that I’ve not seen here. They were gaming pubs. That had pretty sweet setups and you could order beers and drinks from cocktail waitresses, just like say, at a slot machine in a casino. I looked into starting something like this because DC is one of the biggest tech areas in the country and I figured there were tons of gamers here and it would be a hit. Actually researching it, I came up with lot of roadblocks, like the idiocy you go through to get a liquor license, liability concerns, dealing with the clientle, getting robbed at gunpoint, etc. Then the office job didn’t seem so bad.
But I always wondered if something like that would have worked.
That’s nearly $60 bucks a person. That shit is insane. I can go to a nice restaurant in America three times with another person for that much. Your food fucks ducks, and every day you go living in a land without Chipotle and Qdoba is a day you waste.
Good day, sir.
That’s silly. New York is debatable (although I think you’re wrong), but London is nowhere even remotely competitive with Paris.
“the industry” itself seems to disagree with you, but if it’s any consolation I think London’s overpriced and overrated on a general basis as well.
For comparison, a quarter pounder w/cheese meal at McDonald’s will set you back over eight bucks in the UK; prices at a brit Qdoba would be similarly inflated, I’m sure.
Backov,
I’ve been friends for years with a Greek couple that have always used restaraunt ownership as their fallback. The husband likes to run his own businesses, and has tried a few different non-restaraunt ventures that never seemed to pan out, but he always was able to just open a restaraunt someplace in town and make the money back again to try something else later on (usually after selling his stake in said establishment).
He works 6 days a week, 12+ hours a day for the most part (which is why he keeps leaving it to try something else), so be prepared for that. He also constantly laments about the idiots he has to deal with, and he’s not talking about the customers, but rather his suppliers, vendors and employees. He also almost never goes into it alone, he usually has a partner in the venture so that if he wants or needs to get out, he can.
I’m not sure what a “gastro-pub” in Vancouver would be exactly, but my friend usually runs small family establishments that cater to working class folks with moderately priced meals and a small alcohol selection, nothing fancy, nothing on tap, just bottled imports and domestics and some wine.
When I worked in a nightclub in college I used to restock the bar and do closing counts as part of my job. I got to see (from the inventory sheets) what the place paid for the alcohol versus what they sold it for, and it seemed to me like they made a killing just off that, and that food could have been a loss leader (it wasn’t) and they’d still be rolling in cash, so maybe a pub/bar is the way to go. Of course they also had astronomical liquor license costs, a huge rent (prime location across from campus) and a ton of operating expenses…
For comparison, a quarter pounder w/cheese meal at McDonald’s will set you back over eight bucks in the UK; prices at a brit Qdoba would be similarly inflated, I’m sure.
Our minimum wage in Pounds is also higher than the US minimum wage in Dollars which should give you some clue as to why everything here seems incredibly expensive from an American perspective (as well as the exchange rate being really shitty from a US PoV at the moment).
I can get a decent two course meal for around £15 a head, plus drinks here and I don’t doubt I could probably eat until I split if I converted that to Dollars and hit a half decent restaurant outside of the tourist traps in any US city.
I was using the extreme case as a pedagogical device. You should probably let Hanzii know one is supposed to tip in the U.K., although I would not consider restaurants which add 10% to the price, and that’s all one is supposed to tip, to be “tipping.” That’s equivalent to no tipping and 10% higher prices than those listed on the menu. (The same thing irritates me at North American restaurants which add 18% or something for parties of eight or more – mandatory gratuity is a contradiction.) There needs to be an gift-giving relationship for tipping to work as an incentive.
As for being expensive, well the UK is expensive generally compared to most of Europe let alone the US, even when the £/$ exchange rate isn’t running at what it is at the moment.
So? That still means the food in the U.K. is too expensive for the quality, or, equivalently, too low quality given the price. You’re simply agreeing that the food in the U.K. sucks and offering a reason why that’s so.
Not necessarily a great argument. By that logic, food in the U.S. is overpriced/underquality relative to, say, food in Mexico or Brazil or some other place where price levels are generally lower than in the U.S.
If taxes and other costs drive up prices of all goods and services in the U.K. relative to the U.S., it’s unfair to lambaste U.K. restaurants in particular about it.
Even within the U.S., I’d guess that the average U.S. hourly wage goes a lot further now than it did 100 years ago in terms of restaurant food purchasing power. Therefore, people ate out less 100 years ago, and there were presumably far fewer restaurants per-capita back then, too. But were those restaurants poorer quality than today’s restaurants? Possibly, possibly not…
No, I’m agreeing that it’s expensive to someone outside the UK. Your currency is worth half ours and goes twice as far, but then we don’t control 40% of the world economy so buying things as a nation, let alone individually costs us more, we also tax the shit out of everything to pay for foibles like the NHS.
Thanks for the… interesting macroeconomic theories. Wow.
I am glad that you agree that for a given amount of money, one gets worse food in the U.K. I think that culinary traditions in the U.K. (“chicken boiled in Pataki’s tinned curry sauce and a beer for $40? Sign me up!”) have more to do with the problem than exchange rates, but it doesn’t really matter, does it?
Moronic? You’re an idiot.
Nah, I’m great at finding stuff. But the low to mid-priced stuff that I found was invariably crappy. The price range I’m talking about is 10 to 20 pounds, fyi.
If you want good cheap eats in the UK, just go for a curry. By which I mean proper home-grown British-Indian, not one of those poncy ‘authentic Indian’ places, which will usually claim to be able to to provide dishes from fifteen different ‘authentic’ traditions, but will fail at all of them.
Outside of general employee/tax/accounting/supplier issue it all comes down to getting people into the doors and getting people to come back which is accounted by atmosphere. For example, one of the fastest profiting restaurants I’ve ever seen is a hybrid similar to this one.
It’s a Mexican restaurant that is also a butcher as well as a pub. It’s marketed as a butchery that sells high quality meats at very affordable pricing but they specialize in mexican food. Also it has bigscreen TV’s with full soccer coverage. Campos is literally standing room only during most Saturday’s and Sunday’s and everyone has a taco and beer in hand.
Identifying your market, your target audience, your atmosphere and it’s marketability are all things you should have decided before you put down a nickle and starting your own kitchen.
Also, like another poster said, you will be investing an incredible amount of time, especially in the beginning. If you are married and/or have children you should prep them by telling them they probably won’t be seeing much of you for at least a year. Also you might want to take an honest look at your own stress management in order to be fully prepared for what it will take to persevere through your first year of business.