When I am comparing prices here in the Bay area and in LA or NYC I am often surprised that it seems that SF prices in restaurants are still somehow reasonable compared to those cities, e.g. many mains are often still “only” in the $30-40 range and tend to hit $50+ mainly with steak variations. Even most cocktails in bars or restaurants tend to be often below $20.
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Rent for restaurants in the city are insane in Boston, so I can’t even imagine what it’s like in NYC and the surrounding neighborhoods. I’m not surprised seeing chefs take their business and open more and more in the local neighborhoods vs the main downtown areas. It’s why we see this constant chain-ification of those high traffic areas.
But I will nitpick on the salaried dishwasher - no way that is a salaried job, unless there is more to what they do. My HR side will caution - you can’t just choose to pay someone salaried and deny them OT. The writer might not be using that term properly, but hate to see that $40 half chicken turn into a $50 half chicken if the DOL decides they’ve misclassified workers.
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For contrast, from a fried chicken restaurant.
Doesn’t seem like $40 is that far off base
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Dude. That is not something to marvel at. That’s just baseline what-things-should-be.
If you look at prices for example in LA , many cocktails start at $20 (if you are lucky). So yes, it is not great to be “happy” about cocktail prices below $20 but that is the time and economic situation we are living in today in the US
Same in NYC. But you absolutely don’t HAVE to pay that. It’s a choice.
Sounds great, what’s option B? And don’t say “not drinking.”
Of course, nobody has to go to any restaurant or bar or just drink water and eat the free bread but where us the fun.
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Going to a restaurant that doesn’t charge $20+ for a cocktail.
Are you suggesting that your options are “pay $20 for a cocktail” or “stay home”? Because I would push back pretty hard against that.
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Pretty much all alcohol drinks in a restaurant/bar in the US are wayoverpriced (wine, beer, cocktail) as they are one of the main money makers for them. So yes, if you want to go out for a dinner and have something to drink, it is either pay $20 for cocktails (or glass of wine) or stay home (Of course, you can go out to eat without to drink but why not just then also cook at home)
100% not true. I’ll be more expansive later, but I invite you to take a look at the by-the-glass list at The Ten Bells - a very nice wine bar near my house - and note the prices.
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Here is me starting to be expansive. Look! It’s a very hip, tough reservation Brooklyn restaurant. (I’ve been, it’s good.) Cocktails <$20.
Not sure what you want to prove with this list but it is another example of very overpriced alcohol lists. I don’t want to go through all the wines but I just picked the two on the top - the Seneca Lake Sparkling Riesling is available for $21 for a bottle, so the markup is close to 3x. A bottle of the Castell de Grabuac is available in retail for $19, close to the price you are paying for a glass at that wine bar. The absolute prices at this wine bar might look lower but that’s simply because they don’t sell expensive wines but still have a significant markup on their prices. Some of the beer prices are even worse - I can get the Montauk Cold IPA and the N/A for less than $2/can and they sell it for $9 - that’s a markup of >x 4.5 (and both are pretty crappy beers)
This is some top tier goalpost moving. You claimed
I provided evidence that it is not. And your response is that wine is sold at a markup. Quelle surprise! Here’s another cocktail menu with most options <$20 - I was just here for a friend’s b’day.
And I could go on!
You will always find places with cocktails or wine below $20 somewhere but I actually prefer those which have good food and drinks - and that is often much more difficult to find as you either get places which use alcohol to bring people in and have lousy food, Rosa Mexicano is a good example as we went there for business dinner in Seaport Village when we lived in Boston and that is horrible, overpriced “Mexican” food or you have more “dive” bar places which don’t care about food at all and have decent drinks but nothing to write home about. The combination of good food and drinks for a reasonable price is unfortunately hard to find and one has to make compromises or have to pay higher prices to find such a combination
At this point it’s clear we can find numerous examples on both sides of the equation, so I suggest that we abandon this “cocktails are $20+” bit of the thread. The number hardly matters; can we all agree at least that prices for both food and drink have significantly risen in recent years?
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This is precisely the point I was arguing. And it is to no one’s benefit to claim otherwise. You might turn up your nose at such places (I’m not a fan of Rosa Mexicano either, but I wouldn’t go all the way to “horrible” - maybe the Boston branch is much worse than the Union Square branch), but why pretend they don’t exist at all?
The combination of good food for dinner with reasonable priced and good drinks hardly exists - your Rosa Mexicano is a good example - good drinks but not something I would call good food
That may be the case in major metro areas (NYC, SF Bay, LA, Boston, etc.), but it is not my local experience.
