Yeah, city vs boonies def matters. I’d say most anywhere.
1 Like
The Bay Area is the “boonies”?
I concluded that at least parts of NJ must be somewhat “boony”, and finding the best stuff is harder where I am in the Bay area than it is another 30 miles away. With that 30 miles comes a slightly more reasonable cost of life being.
2 Likes
No, “somewhere in NJ” is the boonies. You misread.
1 Like
I think the more likely reason is that 1) there are a lot of bagel shops in NJ, so competition for customers is fierce and 2) prices are generally higher in SF than they are in NJ. There aren’t too many “boonies” in NJ. It’s the most crowded of the 50 states.
3 Likes
My friend moved somewhere in NJ , to move in with a boyfriend 2 years ago, after living in Chelsea for 25 years.
She’s around 10 -15 miles from NYC as a crow flies, but the commute by public transit is close to an hour, so she hasn’t been making the trip that frequently.
On the other hand, I have friends who commuted an hour to 90 minutes each way from
NJ to Manhattan when I was in school, so whether someone will do that, or travel out of their way for food regularly will depend on the person.
She doesn’t drive, so she feels stranded. Where ever she is, she can’t walk to coffee shops, and it sounds like it’s mostly chain restaurants. She misses her former life.
Everyone else I know that lives in NJ has good food options where they live, and/or it isn’t too hard to get to NYC. I also think my friend was spoiled by her location and isn’t looking for the good food that might be a short distance away from where she’s located. I’m always amazed by the choices of restaurants in some parts of NJ.
Whether somewhere is the boonies or not, that’s relative. A lot of people consider the midsized city where I live part-time, London Ontario- to have no good really food options. On the surface, it looks like the city is limited to chain restaurants and strip mall shawarma shops. One needs to know where to look.
I found myself trying to tie this to the original topic, which I felt was way over my head, but interesting to think about.
Maybe “Why is dining out in the boonies generally cheaper than in the most cosmopolitan cities?”, with “boonies” meaning “a thinly settled rural area”, and “cosmopolitan” meaning “having wide international sophistication”.
I assume that is a poor analogy, but I wonder if there may be things in common.
Interestingly , the restaurants in the sticks are more expensive where I live.
The greasy spoon half an hour outside my midsized city costs 25%-35 % more than similar Greek-owned greasy spoons in Toronto or London, On. It’s a busy spot, since it’s the only place that has relatively good home cooking for a 15 mile radius. That’s where the farmers go for a Sunday morning breakfast. It’s also where truckers stop on regional highway. He charges about twice as much for souvlaki as what one would pay for in Greektown in Toronto, and it’s roughly half as good, but most of his clients are a captive market so they wouldn’t know that.
I haven’t been lately because the owner unfriended me on FB because we have different outlooks on things that can’t be discussed here. He happens to be the brother-in-law of a friend so I still get some scoop.
The seasonal towns, relying on tourists, also charge more for less. Higher than Toronto prices because they have a captive market and they make their money over 4 or 6 months instead of 12.
I agree with Natascha that Berlin and Germany in general provide more bang for the buck.
I’ve been saying this for years. Germany provides better food on average, with less complete misses. I honestly believe it’s because your average resident in Germany, regardless of their ethnic origins or citizenship status, will not pay for crappy food, and that expectation of reasonable quality drives the quality up.
Germany doesn’t have the type of tourism traffic that Italy or France experiences, so the gouging tourists for mediocre food at high prices is going to happen less often. There are opportunists who gouge tourists in all countries, but there are less of them in countries with less tourists.
When I see deals in Toronto for certain foods, sometimes it’s a result of high demand, competition keeping the quality up, and businesses paying their employees under the table. The restaurants and bakeries in Toronto are more likely to be paying their staff and suppliers in cash, or offering no tax deals if you pay in cash.
The best bang for your buck in Toronto is the pastèis de nata. These delicious little custard tarts often run $1.25 Cdn-$1.85 Cdn per tart. Meanwhile, Starbucks in Suburbia is charging $4 for a slice of lemon loaf. My iced latte and a cookie/ pastry has been running $10 Cdn.
2 Likes
Kudos on the attempt to connect thread drift on bagel pricing east vs west coast USA to why dining out in Germany seems less expensive than somewhere in the US 
4 Likes
Some folks in NYC consider all of NJ the “boonies”
Also, bagels in the tri-state are standard fare and the single bagel is not where a generic bagel shop is making bank. Add cream cheese or turn into into a sandwich, now you’re ticking up from that $1-1.50 entry point: plus scallion cream cheese = $5+, add novie = $14+, and so on.
1 Like
It’s all relative
Yep. I did misread that.
Too bad, because I was chuckling for quite a while. Living here in Montana, I was thinking, “I will show you boonies!” LOL!
1 Like
That is in interesting and makes me wonder how much depends on what “eating out” means to an individual. I can’t help but think there mlght be some things eaten out in Germany that cost relatively more than they cost to eat somewhere in the US.
When I thought about eating out in my town vs 30 miles away I was thinking something like the cost of the best I can get in Fairfield, CA vs the best I can get in Napa.
Come to think of it, even tacos in Dixon vs tacos in St. Helena.
Okay, different subject.
1 Like
I think it’s what you can buy in a posh town with tourist traffic (Napa, Sonoma) vs what you can buy in a regular town that isn’t a big city (Fairfield, etc). That becomes what the market will bear, what the locals will pay for!
London, Ontario has 423 000 residents, and I have 2 indie upscale restaurants on my go-to list right now, which charge around the same as what a nice midrange restaurant in Toronto charges.
Montreal is a little like Berlin. For Bistro food, you can eat much better in Montreal for $50 than you can eat in Toronto for Bistro food. Toronto has lots of other foods that it does well that are affordable , and cheaper than suburban chain food.
Montreal typically provides more bang for the buck for Western European foods at independently owned restaurants. Quebec City had good food, but it’s remote, and the costs are higher, I think because of its location, its market and less competition.
1 Like
You guys talk about bagels in NJ, and I start getting bagel Ads on FB.
Port Dover, Ontario is a tourist town on Lake Erie, in the relative Boonies, with a new Parisian bakery that sells bagels. New Yorkers and Montrealers won’t be impressed, but it’s nice that the tourists visiting Port Dover , as well as the tomato farmers and asparagus farmers of Norfolk County will have a place for bagels that isn’t a Tim Hortons!
The local regional specialty is the Stroopwafel. There’s a Stroopwafel factory in Norfolk, ON.
1 Like
Stroopwafel? Count me in!
I am not a sweet eater, but United Airlines starting serving these as a snack a few years ago and I am hooked!
It is funny how certain tastes just grab you. Salt licorice from Denmark and Stroopwafels from the Netherlands are two good reasons to visit northern Europe all by themselves.
1 Like
I meant some random place in Jersey that is likely not as expensive as most things in the Bay Area/SF.
Here’s a menu from a local place back home.
I can eat for half of that at equally fancy places in Berlin, but I’m sure I simply can’t grasp the macroeconomics behind it all
It’s alright. I enjoy my food wherever I choose to dine 
4 Likes
Seafood. Scallops & shrimp in particular are incredibly expensive. Local fish (trout, zander, walleye, etc., but freshwater fish for the most part) is more affordable, which probably shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Good cheese - local or Italian or French or Spanish can also be upwards of 3€/100g/3oz. We bite the bullet when it comes to the cheese bc there are so many varieties here that we can’t get back in the US.
Wine is also much cheaper here, and far more variety than back home. Remind me again why I’m going back in September? 
2 Likes
