Eating Out becoming a Luxury?

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121680794#Comment_121680794

...so ta hell with them!

...thats nice!

...and you have talked to all employees, and they truthfully told you about their housing situation, thats impressive!

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121680796#Comment_121680796

Well given how high Ireland ranks on the savings league, a lot of them must not be spending very much at all to balance out those that do. The reality is that values and culture are always changing and people's perspective and priorities today are different to those of the past and those that people will hold in the future.

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121680796#Comment_121680796

There's far more distractions these days.

Also to catch up with people in the past, you had to go to the pub.

I'm old enough to remember the world before internet, mobile phones, TV etc.

I know we had TV a long time but I'm old enough to remember just 3 TV channels and it was mostly crap.

Cheddar Bob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121680796#Comment_121680796

I can absolutely tell you that the replacing of the old soapbar with the vastly more expensive and much stronger weed since circa 2010 has absolutely led to a decline in the amount of young people frequenting pubs and clubs.

And it's expensive too. Not uncommon for smokers to spend 100, 150 a week on that stuff.

Try smoke 150 worth of petrol and plastic bulked out resin in a week 20 years ago, you'd be brought to hospital and put on an iron lung before long.

Cheddar Bob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121680808#Comment_121680808

Nobody on minimum wage has a mortgage.

I would have zero synpathy for a card only business going under if that's the contempt they show for customers. A plus in my book is any business which has a big "Cash Only" poster in the window, I simply don't have the time to be wasting with card paying people infront of me.

flatty

Nobody, no matter how wealthy, likes feeling they've been slightly ripped off. Rightly or wrongly, many of the prices in Ireland these days leave you with this impression, so you just don't go back, not because you can't afford it, or because the food was poor or the service poor (though these also), but simply because it felt like you'd been slightly taken advantage of. I suspect this has a bit to do with it.

If it's on expenses, you don't care.

But make no mistake, Ireland is an extremely wealthy country, but is also an extremely expensive one. That's the model at present.

An observation though, is that the first time I was ever in a restaurant was my confirmation day, and the first time I went abroad other than England was a school exchange trip to France aged 16.

We are now in the situation, fortunate or otherwise, that our kids have travelled the world by the age of 16, and often we'd ask them if they want to go out for dinner, and they'd either say no, or ask where we are going and decide accordingly.

It's a different world entirely, and it doesn't really sit well with me.

Cheddar Bob

This place gets a spot on the news every few weeks

‘It’s very quiet’ – Dublin chipper struggling to get customers in the door in January | Independent.ie

I checked their website- at 15.80 for a fish meal I'm not surprised they're quiet.

How can San Marino do it for just over a tenner on the app yet everybody else is crying the poor mouth? Every other chicken/ beef burger meal in SM is still well south of a tenner yet it would be rare to find them below the square 10 anywhere else these days.

orangerhyme

If anyone's looking for cheap but quality fast food in Dublin try "Mikey's" in UCD.

One of the best Fish and Chips I've ever had for €9.

It's probably subsidised though.

Carlito Brigantes Tale

Heard of 3 more restaurants gone this last week in Dublin. I think we are reaching a tipping point now where even fairly well off people who have been going out to eat at the weekends or maybe the odd time during the week are now staying in instead. I know that process began for less well off folk at least a year ago because of high inflation so this could signal a tsunami of closures now.

I very rarely even get take out now our local Thai place has gone from 10.99 for a Pad Thai to 15.99 in the space of a year. Was out in Bray on the motorbike last week and pulled up on the seafront to get a bag of chips for lunch and they wanted 4.50 so i just told them to keep them no way would i pay that for a couple of spuds.

El_Duderino 09

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121680607#Comment_121680607

It's not young people's jobs to support those industries for the sake of old people's nostalgia. They don't have the money for 4 day benders. Maybe pints were thruppence-ha'penny back in the day and young people had plenty of disposable income. But young people don't have that disposable income nowadays.

If the average young people ever want a house, then pints are pretty much a rare luxury. It's sad that young people don't have disposable income nowadays, it's not sad that they don't waste any disposable income they have on drink. It's savvy, fair play to them.

JupiterKid

Four day drinking benders are now firmly in the past, except for stag parties and alcoholics on a spree who can ill-afford them.

Plenty of those alcoholics would have slid into destructive and dependant drinking thanks to those 4 day or all-weekend sessions in their youth. Plenty of Irish children in the past went hungry and cold due to Da being out on 4 day benders. Not to mention shocking levels of alcohol-fuelled domestic and street violence.

I'm a recovering alcoholic myself, nearly 5 years sober so I'm biased in this respect but I've seen at first-hand how destructive alcohol can be to people and families. The slow death of the drinking culture in Ireland is due to changing values in Irish society as Jim2007 and others here opined - and that is not something to lament IMO.

I too have a feeling that 2024 will be a year of reckoning for the restaurant and food service sector. People are fed up with being fleeced.

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121681383#Comment_121681383

It'll be a year of reckoning alright but I don't think they're gouging people.

I think they're just trying to survive.

Tolteca closing is a bad sign but maybe there was a saturation of mexican places so it's survival of the fittest.

The government might have to yield to their VAT demands.

Alternatively maybe it's no harm with a labour shortage and a housing crisis.

Cheddar Bob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121681292#Comment_121681292

Absolute nonsense.

Instead of 4 day benders young people today spend a month's worth of 4 day benders on a 1300 Canada Goose jacket.

Instead of going to nightclubs every weekend all year they spend 5 or 6 grand attending a festival every other weekend all summer. 2000s Ireland had 2 or 3 festivals per summer- I wouldn't be surprised if there's a three figure amount today.

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121681415#Comment_121681415

Old man yells at cloud.

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121681415#Comment_121681415

There's far more distractions and alternatives to drinking.

You can go on the pull and arrange dates with dating apps.

You can catch up with friends and have group chats with your phone.

Drinking's very expensive.

There's 1000s of hours of good quality TV and films at your fingertips.

All the music in the world at your fingertips.

Lots of people don't even like festivals very much. They're expensive and very draining and the sound quality isn't the best.

Only Dublin teenagers wear Canada goose as far as I know.

I know lots of people who spend very little on clothes.

Cheddar Bob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121681383#Comment_121681383

I was listening to Newstalk and the owner of a wine off licence was on talking about the changing Irish attitudes to wine and alcohol in general.

Not verbatim but

"Nowadays my customers come in, they're asking me about texture, scents, and which of these goes down nicest with seafood, an Indian or an Italian.

20 years ago my customers would come in, read the label and say things like "18%! We'll get a few of these, we'll be absolutely blootered after two or three bottles"

A different era.

Cheddar Bob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121681427#Comment_121681427

Young people spend nearly as much on entertainment today as they did in my day, bar perhaps the mad money spent on CG and the like.

Just instead of pubs and nightclubs getting it it's a few big gig promotors in a short window during the summer.

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121681451#Comment_121681451

I used try to calculate in my head the most alcohol at the cheapest price when buying wine.

whatawaster81

There's a fried chicken joint beside the office in George's Dock that ceased trading this week. Won a Just Eat award a couple of years.

Also a Griolladh in the downstairs closed after only opening a couple of months ago. Seemed to be jammed at lunch but obviously not viable.

Ezeoul

It is sad to see anyone's livelihood going under.

I feel like I should make an effort to do a tour of the few places I did like for lunch, for nostalgic reasons, in case they are the next to close.

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121681516#Comment_121681516

Griolladh sounds too much like Gorilla.

Griolladh's in the mist.

MrMusician18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121638890#Comment_121638890

I can say I've noted both similar taste and appearances of carvery dinners throughout the country. The turkey and ham carvery is the same almost everywhere: round cut of ham, layer of stuffing and round cut of turkey on top drowned in salty gravy.

I suppose it's Musgrave's?

dxhound2005

The Sunday Times has restaurant reviews from Ireland and Britain every week. Last Sunday a meal for two in Wicklow was €160. For two in London £201. One of the items alone on the menu, monkfish for £36 would be enough to get me a few dinners. I believe the Irish Times and other papers have similar columns where big money is being spent.

The same papers often have sob stories about the downtrodden citizenry not being able to afford to live on their measly incomes.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121681555#Comment_121681555

At this stage the only think Ireland and the UK have in common is a shared language beyond that you might as well be comparing us to Albania for all the insight it would provide. Ireland's GDP per capita is over twice that of the UK and no matter what arguments you want to wheel out about the calculation of GDP per capita, that fact remains that countries with a high number are expensive places to live, as most posts confirm. Although there are some people out there who seem to thinking that people living in whatever sector they are complaining about should magically be able to live cheaply in an expensive place so they get to have cheap stuff.

johnire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121681516#Comment_121681516

Where’s George’s Dock?

maninasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121644454#Comment_121644454

Yep the way the housing states were planned out , and are still planned out , is very poor and frankly stupid. They will have hundreds of houses and apartment blocks but generally speaking not put shops and restaurant spaces on the ground floors or interspersed between them. Doesn't make sense. And pretty dull.

Anybody who thinks Dublin has loads of cafes and restaurants either lives in the city centre or has never travelled much overseas or.thtough.the vast Dublin suburbs..

Phibsboro was mentioned above but Phibsboro is practically the city centre too. . anything further out pickings get slim very fast. Not that Phibsboro is a mecca either. Smithfield is also the city centre and Stoneybatter a stones throw from it. Folks need to check their maps.

whatawaster81

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121681606#Comment_121681606

IFSC

Muahahaha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121681544#Comment_121681544

You could go to 10 carverys and they'll all taste very similar. Watery carrots cut into battons and mashed potato from a packet is the order of the day. Its barely changed in 20 years.

I think Pallas Foods (now called Sysco) are the main supplier to pubs, you see their trucks delivering to pubs a lot. Many pubs are buying the same stuff and their kitchens are more like a reheating facility than anything else.

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121681608#Comment_121681608

Yeah I meant specifically the newer, outer suburbs. There's very little. Like a couple of shops, a takeaway, a pub, a hairdressers maybe.

By newer I mean 20th century.

Phibs, Smithfield, Ballsbridge, Blackrock, Ranelagh, Rathmines etc are 19th century.

maninasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121681018#Comment_121681018

Yeah that's not most families though.

Most families are not eating out much at all in Ireland.

It actually mystifies me why more cheap and cheerful restaurant chains haven't sprung up.