Portion control, accurate pours. These culinary matters are bedeviling me.
Since the great pandemic, the restaurant business has been in topsy-turvy turmoil. If you habituate eating and drinking establishments these days, you are feeling the pangs of being taken advantage of. It is creeping into my psyche, big time.
The niceties of moderation and pricing in dining are going out the window. Yet everywhere I go these days, restaurants are mobbed. I don’t understand why, given the outrageous price of meals and drinks they are serving up. Yes, inflation had been raging, but prices have been leveling off, while the cost of dining is heading up.
At-home cooking is not my forte, so my husband and I have always been restaurant people. We treasure the memories and friendships we have forged at the dinner table.
Those who follow my exploits know that the late, great Yoshi’s Café was the pinnacle of my joyful eating, the now-shuttered spa in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, where food and hospitality commingled gloriously. No one worked harder than its proprietors, Yoshi and Nobuko Katsumura, to bring superb fare and reasonable prices to their loyal following. Yoshi’s closed in 2021 after a nearly 40-year run, and with it, it seems, that tradition.
Now, we are faltering in our zeal for a good meal. Please let us keep a few shekels in our pockets. Let us leave the dining table full, instead of scanning the room for more food.
The restaurant sharks have taken charge.
Don’t get me wrong. The difficulty of establishing and maintaining a successful restaurant cannot be minimized. The failure rate is crazy. Restaurant startups are challenged to survive past the first year. You wonder why anyone would get into the business, but thankfully, they do. Fortunately, some succeed spectacularly, and we foodies appreciate that.
Yet, as they say, past success is no guarantee of future performance. From my perch, the restaurant business is walking an exceptionally fine line between decent value and deplorable rip-off.
Look at the mantra of portion control. Large plate, small portion. Take a gander at the entrees arriving at your table these days. The food looks pretty on the plate, that is, if you can find it. Serving sizes have shrunk to the point that I need to put on my eyeglass readers to wield a knife and fork.
And the prices? Come on. We all shop for groceries and know the price of a piece of fish or a steak. I know restaurants must make a profit, but the markups are unnerving.
Check out the fresh Atlantic salmon filets going for $9.99 a pound at Trader Joe’s and $13.99 per pound at Whole Foods Market.
Fancy a “salmon entree” at a dining establishment? At a so-called modestly priced restaurant I visited last week, a third of a pound of grilled salmon, plopped on a bed of “fancy” arugula or a molehill of pasta, they wanted 30 bucks.
Want a steak? Don’t get me started.
It’s another form of “shrinkflation.” That’s when companies hide the price increases of a product by reducing its size. This devious practice is common in many goods, such as candy, cereal, paper towels, diapers — and potato chips, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In Thursday’s State of the Union speech, President Joe Biden nailed it. “The snack companies think you won’t notice if they change the size of the bag, and put a hell of a lot fewer … chips in (the same-sized bag).”
We all know food costs have gone up, but please give the poor restaurant-goer a break. We are nickel-and-dimed to death. That is, if you can remember what change looks like. It’s all starting to get under my husband’s skin, and I am hearing about it. The one cost issue that makes him crazy are the “pours.” I frequently find myself gently tapping his shoulder and whispering, “Dear, it’s going to be OK. It’s going to be all right.”
Traditionally, most restaurants planned to get four glasses of wine from every bottle. That was once considered an “accurate pour,” the gold standard of wine service. Now, restaurateurs everywhere are squeezing five glasses out of every bottle.
When that glass of vino arrives at your table, it looks like the bartender already took a gulp. It’s infuriating. This is a case of a glass that truly is half empty, not half full. And wait until you hear hubby’s rant about the pricing. The price of a glass of restaurant wine has hit the stratosphere.
Typically, that would be $16 for a glass of sauvignon blanc, for a brand that goes for $14 a bottle in the store. Believe me, I know. My husband has thoroughly checked the pricing. A glass of wine in an upscale restaurant in the single digits? Extinct. Fini.
When I talk to restaurant owners, they offer a long list of gripes. They can’t find good help. Rising food costs and rent. Government bureaucracy and its endless red tape, regulation and fees. Taxes, etc.
That’s all true, but what about us? Those ever-increasing restaurant tabs with poor service can lead to one dire place. If this keeps up, we will be stuck with more lousy meals at home.
Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist. Her columns appear in the Tribune each Monday. Write to her at LauraLauraWashington@gmail.com.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.
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