<p>I take it you’ve never tried to prepare a good dim sum brunch? There’s a lot more to Chinese than just “soy sauce.”</p>
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<p>Try going to nicer restaurants then…</p>
<p>You keep trying to be “witty” with your posts, but you’re just ignoring the obvious points that keep being made. I see your point. We all get it, really. It’s not like I eat out as often as I can, but there are times when I’d LOVE to get some good sushi (which you CANNOT prepare at home more cheaply…or safely), or maybe shawarma (do you have a rotisserie at home?), or how about some good ramen (I’m talking the REAL stuff)?</p>
<p>There are simply things that you cannot prepare at home as well unless you have very specific tools.</p>
<p>“There are simply things that you cannot prepare at home as well unless you have very specific tools.”</p>
<p>Okay, fine. Hypothetically, let’s say I loved fondu. I go to the store to purchase a fondu set for $100.00. Well, theoretically, that is one meal at a fondu restaurant. Sure, purchasing all of the supplies that you need can be expensive, but over time pays for itself. A crock pot, for example, could cost close to $60.00, but over time, the money you save by eating at home will far exceed the meager amount of $60.00.</p>
<p>“Try going to nicer restaurants then…”</p>
<p>Nope. Regardless if you go to the Le Expensivo Restaurant or Ma’s Fried Chicken, you will always be faced with loud clientele, and poor restaurant cleanliness. UCLAri, have you ever heard the pithy proverb,“What you don’t know won’t hurt you.” This applies to restaurants. Whether you go to the Le Expensivo or Ma’s Fried Chicken, you still deal with uncleanliness in the kitchen. Hair strands still can be in your chicken cordon bleu or Ma’s Jumbo Chicken. Bottom line, no matter the price tag, you still deal with the uncleanliness of a restaurant atmosphere.</p>
<p>When I became an American citizen, friends took me out to a restaurant and gave me a little present (a tape of An American in Paris, a miniature model-T Ford , etc… One friend gave me a bottle of ketchup “You pour it over food and everything tastes American.”</p>
<p>I don’t think anybody will be able to change your mind about restaurants, hard as we try. The thing is, yes, it may be costly and even unnecessery, but if people always do only the things which are necessery, life will be awfully boring. I like an occasional dinner at a nice and interesting restaurant, you like growing your own produce and make your food in the crock pot. These are different ways to entertain ourselves.</p>
<p>By the way, having worked in a restaurant, I can tell you a few things:</p>
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<li> Cleanliness is a seriously sought after goal. Restaurants are based, in part, on trust. Breaking that trust will lead to a loss of clientele and therefore revenue. Any decent restaurant will work its ass off to keep things straight.</li>
<li> Most restaurants take precautions that most people don’t take at home. </li>
<li> Your own home is very very likely to be dirtier than the average McDonalds in terms of pathogens and ickies.</li>
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<p>I would love to know where Robert E Lee eats…my goodness</p>
<p>Does he shop, does he touch shopping carts, bathroom doors, does he know what goes inside a hotdog, whereever he goes, it sounds like he has never eaten on a decent restraurant in his life</p>
<p>please, tell us how often you eat out, with so many horrid experiences you are the exception</p>
<p>I don’t eat out mainly because I am turning starting to eat healthy and doing a hardcore training routine. I think giving up eating out is a small sacrifice for the gains I have made :)</p>
<p>UCLAri, talk about mix and matching my responses. Way to go! :)</p>
<p>citygirlsmom, your philosophy almost resembles elitsm. Your attitude is basically that the only way fine dining can be attained is at a restaurant; anything other than a so called “five star” dining experience is laughed upon.
I just don’t get it myself. I prefer to eat at home, and you claim I have never eaten at a fine restaurant.What a way to assume.</p>
<pre><code> UCLAri, one can make sushi easily if you live near the coast. Go to the local pier and purchase a few pounds of fresh fish. It is not that difficult to make.
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<p>I think I can now verbalize the thing that irks me the most about the idea of constantly eating out. If I do go somewhere and eat out, I want it to be a nice meal. I can’t do fast food or takeouts or a lot of stuff at chain restaurants because all the extra grease and fat and whatnot makes me feel sick, literally. I remember when I would go on vacations with my family, where we had to eat out for every meal every day obviously, by the end I just felt so bleh that I would have been happy going home and eating a bowl of plain rice or something. I’m not going to pay extra money to subject myself to nausea unless I think it’s going to alienate people I’m trying to become friends with.</p>
<p>So assuming I only eat at places that aren’t going to make me ill, they’re probably going to be a bit more expensive, and I want it to be a luxury of sorts. If I’m going out three times a week, it just becomes ‘normal’, and if something that should be a luxury is such a part of my normal life that I don’t even notice it, I’m being unecessarily extravagant. Reminds me a bit of a girl I went to high school with who was complaining that she would miss some kind of event happning on the last day of classes for the year, because she was leaving a few days early because her family insisted on dragging her to Hawaii for a 2 week vacation, again, sigh. I’m not so picky that every bite of food I eat has to be superduperwonderful and professionally prepared…I just eat so I don’t die, thanks.</p>
<p>I have stated my opinions here about eating out. I feel that home cooking is both economical and better for you in the long run. The only counter argument here so far is," I haven’t the time." That argument, IMO, does not cut it. Tell me, why is eating out better than home cooking. Please, tell me!</p>
<p>There were all sorts of arguments, you just chose to ignore them.
My main reason is-entertainment. We go out to try something different, to eat something I am not able to prepare to my satisfaction. Not everybody is a fabulous cook, not everybody has all the engredients readily available, so here you go, it’s reason enough to me. :-)</p>
<p>There’s much more to sushi then just throwing a piece of fish on white rice. It’s about VARIETY and specific cuts and the rice itself. It’s much harder to make than you give credit. Trust me, I’ve eaten at some of the best sushi restaurants in Japan, and you definitely get what you pay for.</p>
<p>You still haven’t explained how I’m going to get shawarma. Where do you keep your rotisserie?</p>
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<p>There’s more to it than just time. Some things are just not easy or even well-prepared at home. Plus, you can’t always expect to be as expert at preparing certain dishes as the chefs at a restaurant may be. </p>
<p>Eating out isn’t about economy, but you fail to recognize that. But what difference does it make? It’s not your money.</p>
<p>Robert, I agree that eating at home is both more economical and most probably (depending on choices) healthier. I would be perfectly happy eating at home most of the time if someone else was doing the cooking. After 30 years of marriage, many of those years on a tight budget, I am tired of planning meals, running to the store, doing all the preparation/cooking and all the clean up. I like to eat out because someone else is doing all the scut work.</p>
<p>Robert E Lee, Citygirlsmom said nothing about 5-star dining. We San Franciscans have an endless supply of economical restaurants with virtually every cuisine imaginable, many very inexpensive. We’re talking about a full meal at a sit down restaurant for under $8/person… if we want. My maximum, for special occasions like birthdays, is the sort of restaurant where an entree is about $16.50.</p>
<p>As I said before, I realize that there are parts of the country which don’t provide such an abundance of riches, and you must live in one of them. So I don’t begrudge your choice. Just stop condemning ours – we city dwellers are used to variety and we are very familiar with all the cheap but good places the tourists don’t know about.</p>
