Eating Out becoming a Luxury?

Ate out at the weekend in a 'gastropub' in a small village in Louth and had beef cheeks with mashed veg & gravy. Cost €21 which was steep for such a cheap cut of beef. But also I wanted a starter until I saw the price of them, every single one on the menu was priced €12.50 upwards. 6 chicken wings for €12.95 is a bit of a joke really. I know costs have gone up but when a small starter costs €13 you begin to question eating out at all.

Conversely Ive found the earlytable.ie website handy for eating out after work in Dublin. Two of us ate in Asador near Baggot Street last week. We had chicken wings and an octopus starter then 2 x 10oz Picanha steaks with pepper sauce & chips. The deal through that website was for 50% off the bill by dining at 6pm. Total cost was €52 for both of us, an absolute bargain.

There's no cheap cuts anymore. I got shin on the bone a while back for a stew. The butcher had to order it in for me.

Wasn't rammed last week and we'd no problem getting a couple of sneaky late ones either.

BTW, what's "tourist prices" if not price gouging?

Everything's increased at the same time though.

Even things like cooking oil went way up in price.

Wages didn't increase at the same rate which is a pity.

I still don't think they're gouging.

Most places rely on repeat custom so they're doing their best to keep prices down.

The Grange pub that I went to is a quiet suburban pub so it's all locals.

The only way to know that is by knowing the costs.

Thing is, you look at you plate of carvery, the only thing costing money really is the meat. The veg you are getting isn’t really anything, . The direct markup from cost of food to profit margin on that food id say is easily around 140-150%….huge markups on ALL drinks both alcohol and soft drinks…. Costs are an issue in every business and industry… publicans are not struggling on the whole…but the quickest of everyone to put on the poor mouth.

The brothers who own my local are driving a new BMW and a Mercedes AMG respectively.. and bought a new pub recently…

exactly, I’ve eaten top meals in Spain, France, Italy and service was brilliant too and am not being ripped off.

A carvery for 19 quid is just a pïss take… so a carvery, dessert and one pint say, not exactly an ostentatious afternoon….

carvery… 19

dessert… 7

pint… 6

32 euros for 2 courses, a drink and you obviously get no table service being a carvery…. So, you interaction with staff is minimal…

imagine taking a family of 4…. Even if the 2 kids just wanted a half portion you are looking at serious dosh… the guts of 90 euros for four people to experience eating a carvery in a pub ? 🤮🤑. What a time to be alive, not.

If you asked people do they support the minimum wage increase, extra sick leave, extra bank holiday etc- 9 out of 10 would say yes.

Then they can't understand why prices go up.

Seems to be a bit of a bloodbath at the minute with places closing. Government actions are closing perfectly good businesses.

I do wonder if the spate of announced closures is duet of he end of the tax warehousing - go bust **** away from the debt, hard for the Revenue to recover and reopen under a different name ….

Tech salaries have not shot up and there were quite a lot of redundancies. Tech salary rates have come down or been flat for a few years. The big change has been work from home and even at that some companies forced their staff to return to their office. AI is a huge risk to their salaries so I wouldn't go around assuming IT staff are huge earners and it also requires lot of ongoing learning to stay in the field.

Yeah, there was about 10 restaurants in Dublin in the 80's and into the 90's 😄. I remember Fan's on Dame Street being one of them, now closed a number of years. I also remember when all the American fast food places were starting to open, like McDonald's on O'Connell St.

Don't think I was even ever in a proper restaurant for most of the 80's though. Dinner was for having in the house.

We were probably better off too, all things considered. Good, old fashioned, mammy food.