Ok, I feel I have to come out in defense of fine dining here, now it's very possible that you happened to go to a really crappy expensive restaurant but what you describe are not what you'll generally find in better places. My wife and I like to consider ourselves foodies, we're not rich but we generally get out to eat once a month and go to 'fancy' places a couple of times a year. I'm in Washington State in the US and all of my experience is in the US mostly here and New York but I suspect their similar all over.
Battleaxx90 said:
Seriously, what's the point? Let's go over the reasons as to why they suck:
#1: Long waiting times
In more than one sense of the word. First of all, if the restaurant is popular, there'll be an hours-long waiting list to even get in, and that's if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, you'll have to wait days, or even WEEKS to get in! And once you DO get in, what's next? Oh, just some more waiting. Hour-long waits for the menus to arrive, hour-long waits for the food to arrive, and it's all for...
Someone has already said but yeah, reservations will solve some of this problem. Waiting a long time to get a menu isn't something I've ever come across so maybe you just had a crap waiter but there's not much that can be done about that. So far as the food, unfortunately there you're right, an 30 minutes to an hour is just about how long you should expect to wait on an entree, 20-30 minutes for an appetizer. I like to use this time to converse but if you're hungry or in a hurry, well you probably shouldn't be going to a fancy place.
#2: Macroscopic food portions
Sure, they say that good things take time. But if you're going to take eons to cook up a piece of food no bigger than my fist, than I think I'd rather eat my beard that I didn't walk into the restaurant with. I wouldn't mind the wait if it looked like it actually TOOK time, but in most cases, it looks like the chef was taste-testing it the whole way through, leaving almost nothing left. Fun fact: Any old schmuck can buy a cookbook with 20-minute recipes and can make them taste good as long as they know what they're doing. Speaking of making it taste good
This is just going to vary from restaurant to restaurant, it very well could be though that you were ordering 'the wrong thing' at the restaurant. I've been to a lot of places where if you order a steak you'll get a small 8oz with a couple of sides in similar portions but if you order pasta or fish you'll be burred in food and places where the reverse is true as well. I recommend looking around at the other diners tables as you're being seated to get a gauge. Also at a nice place it's not a bad idea to ask your server what they'd recommend, they're generally pretty good about suggesting solid filling meals.
#3: The food's no better than any other restaurant
Here's a fun little story: A few months back, I was taken to a fancy restaurant somewhere in Sydney for a cousin's wedding, where I ordered some lasagne. It took two hours to get to my table and the lasagne was passable at best. The next week, me and my mates went out to some Italian restaurant in the suburbs, where I again ordered lasagne, which was the best damn lasagne I ever tasted. What's the point of going to a fancy restaurant if I can get better food at some small-time restaurant that's struggling to pay its bills? Speaking of money...
Without a doubt you can find great food for great prices at small restaurants and if you find a gem like that jump on it and tell your friends. This doesn't however translate to a blanket 'you can generally find better food for better prices than at fancy places'. It's very possible that lasagne was just something that that particular restaurant wasn't good at. Also, being that you were there for a wedding it's possible that you're long delay (and the poor flavor due to the food cooling) was due to the extra business associated with an event./
It's easy to look at a fancy place and say, "well I can spend $50 for steak here or $15 for it at the local diner and therefor the diner is better" but among other things at a nice place your paying for better trained chefs and better quality materials, which does generally translate to not only better tasting and more filling food but more healthy as well.
You mentioned earlier than anyone can get a 20min recipe and make something that tastes good, and to an extent that's true, but only in the sense that you can give anyone a pencil and they can draw a cartoon in an hour. You can't make a brisket in 20 minutes, you can't perfect grilling a steak without a LOT of practice, and you probably can't buy many of the spices, vegetables and means that you'll find in the nicest restaurants in an economical fashion.
In summary, I fail to see the appeal of fancy restaurants, due to the fact that you have to wait for hours for an expensive morsel of food that isn't even very good. I have no idea what everybody sees in them, but I for one am never going to another one of those scams again if I can help it.
Mostly what foodies see in fancy places is very simply better food but it does go further than that. Some times you go to a nice place for a unique experience, molecular gastronomy makes for a very interesting eating experience and a nice tapas place will allow you to try a broad variety of food in a single meal. Setting can also be an important factor, a nice restaurant will be an enjoyable experience just to sit in. Lastly there's inspiration, most foodies also cool, and the people in the nice restaurants (and of course sometimes in the small holes in the wall) are on the cutting edge of how to get the best out of food. Since I've been to Delmonico's I've learned a lot of tricks about how to spice my steaks, after eating at Purple I've become much more creative in building a salad. I love nice restaurants and wish I could get to them more, and I do hope that you find some in your area that you'll appreciate as well.
