It might be a reflection of were we have lived in the US
I don’t want to repeat myself but it is impossible to imagine paying $40 for half a chicken ever. I don’t care if someone thinks I am a rube for saying that as a new york city lifer. But, it is absolutely preposterous. People will still be saying that it’s justified when it costs a kidney and your first born, too. The cost benefit is not there for me at this point. Nothing can justify paying that much of my salary.
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At $30/burger I will definitely not eat out. I am also not interested in paying $30+ for a plain pizza. If other people have the money, go for it. But it is inaccessible to me as a government employee. I don’t feel like I am missing anything either. Knowing it is unaffordable has quelled any interest in dining out I once had. There are better uses of my time and money.
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And Theodora? Or are you going to let “hardly” do the heavy lifting? The argument that “things used to be cheaper” is not exactly a tough one to make, and it’s not the one you started with, just sayin’.
A whole, uncooked chicken (such as Bell and Evans) can easily cost $25. So $40 for a well prepared, quality half chicken in a NYC restaurant isn’t unreasonable.
Now I wouldn’t necessarily order that at a restaurant, but considering what NYC dining costs these days, it’s not terrible.
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As a lifelong NYC dweller, I don’t find your opinion unreasonable. $40 for a half chicken is a lot of money. But there is an economic reason behind it (food cost, rent and overhead in NYC).
Thankfully we have so many choices here. Personally, I’d rather get a dish of soy sauce chicken over rice in Chinatown for about $12. It’s not organic or fancy, but it is freaking delicious. And I’d probably enjoy it more. I can save the “fancy chicken” for making at home.
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Just a quick thanks for recognising that the cost of this chicken is down to more than the cost of the ingredients: Overhead of rent, energy bills-- ever increasing and certainly here in Europe, salaries, equipments, etc all have increased. It’s amazing that there are people able to offer something at a much lower cost, and as with all low cost items, it means someone is likely paying for that elsewhere.
I’m not saying I can afford it or that it sounds reasonable, but there’s so many factors I’m not going to pretend that this is peak ridiculousness.
(As for cocktails, they aren’t really my thing anymore, but I will indulge in special places or most typically at a pal’s house, because she is super into mixology and has an amazing personal bar so I get my cocktails there. I’m not in NYC, but I can assure you that Edinburgh is plenty pricey-- probably because we are such a tourist attraction.)
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Can confirm!
As a restaurant operator for decades who had to determine, justify and explain pricing of plates, none of this is mysterious to me. However, if your rent, labor, ingredients, utilities, marketing, etc… mean that you are charging $100 for a muffin and there’s a line around the block because you mill your own flour and swim the english channel with the butter, I still won’t buy it.
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a countertop mill you say?! 
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And no one is making you
First of all they couldn’t. Second of all…Phew. What a relief.
I wonder what will replace them in that space.
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