Genuine question about restaurants/cafes

11.95 including chips, cooked and served to you isn't fine dining, it's a local caf. From when I worked in greasy spoon years ago, if we ran out of supplies from the weekly delivery, someone would run down to the local spar and buy a few rolls, or ketchup, or whatever we had run out of.

I'd say it's common enough, and tesco finest might be higher quality than whatever they usually get!

Probably common enough in cafes that they buy stuff in rather than make it themselves. Though I am surprised they buy burgers from Tesco when they could get high fat mince wholesale for about 3 euro a kilo and quickly make way more burgers for the price Tesco charge for their Finest range. They could make much nicer burgers for cheaper so it doesnt make business sense for them to be buying a more expensive product in Tesco, theyd have better profit margins if they just made their own.

Had lasagne at the weekend in my own local cafe and you could tell it was bought in rather than homemade as it was just a layer of mince then pasta then cheese. It wasnt very good either but was 9.75 served with chips. Would personally prefer to pay more for something homemade that tastes nice.

That would require a prep area and segregation of raw/cooked food, if the place isn't big they may not have the space/time or they just couldn't be bothered when their customers will buy what they are selling.

Over in France a few times I've got lasagne in restaurants still frozen in the middle they took them back and tried to nuke them again, 1st place it was still frozen and I refused it( they where nice enough not to charge me for it!!) 2nd place managed to get it hot. From what I've heard if a place has more than 2 or 3 options on the menu it'll most likely be frozen/bought in food, too much prep work for them to be made fresh when you order.

It's why I rarely eat out anymore, you just don't know what your getting and more often than not you feel disappointed and overcharged.

I've come across this kind of realisation before where someone was lambasting a kebab shop for using Lidl frozen chips.

Now, taking into account that I don't know of a single kebab shop in Ireland that makes fresh cut chips, my question was, "why are Lidl chips considered worse that some random, unknown wholesale brand of chips?"

Whats the difference though between them buying in Tesco burgers and buying in mince and prepping themselves? AFAIK under HACCP they need one fridge for cooked meats and another for raw meats anyway so they're going to need that to store the Tesco burgers regardless. They'd need a prep area for raw food but presumably that consists of a hand washing sink and a steel bench. Some cafes might not have that space but some do, my local would anyway as they've two kitchens.

I can understand them buying in something like lasagne as its time consuming to make and if homemade it would likely break the 10 euro barrier. But burgers take 10-15 seconds to ball up and weigh from raw, they are probably the quickest thing you could prep on a cafes menu. After that they still have to be cooked just like the Tesco ones.

In a cheap cafe, the food cost is a much higher % of price than it is in a high end restaurant. You're paying ~8 for a meal not ~30; the food cost could be ~4 for the cafe and ~10 for the restaurant.

There are 2 hotels near me in dublin city centre with attached pubs/restaurants, both have burger and chips on the menu for €16 and €16.50 respectively, which i thought was scandalous. Was in and got the 16.50, was standard enough, little metal trolley with about 20 chips in it.

Bunsen, bobo's and the like, burger alone is generally 9-12€ i think, and are muxh better quality.

Bunsen is only €7.85 for a burger. I think they are excellent value.

But what do they do with all the fat? I know how much comes off a kilo or so of mince. It must be bucket loads in a burger joint. Straight down the drain? 🤢