Expensive Dining

My in-laws dined out once a year, on their anniversary.  They always went to the same restaurant, the most famous in their city at the time.  When I first met them, they had moved to the suburbs just past the city limits, while the restaurant established itself in the oldest district of the city near the waterfront.  My father-in-law disliked driving, which was a considerable imposition in that part of the city most of the time.  They took a taxi round trip.  We never knew what they ate.

As prosperous suburban people, we dine out more often, though far less than we once did.  As newlyweds, we lived in student housing, walking distance to oodles of places to eat owned by people who understood student budgets.  We sampled a coffee emporium before Starbucks existed, along witha place to get Soup & Make Your Own Sandwich, slightly more upscale nosh destinations for people like us with starter incomes.  And the city had the truly upscale, where we began our in-law's tradition of isolating our anniversary for a splurge.  

The restaurant industry did not ignore people like us.  Indeed, on my last trip to where our marriage started, those dining boutiques worthy of a small plate had become the fast food and casual dining found everywhere.  

As moderately high-wage earners with children to raise, eating out became more of an escape.  Our permanent home had pizza places, regional chains and national franchises, a few local places of modest cost when neither my wife nor I wanted to cook after a strenuous day at work.  None very expensive.  At about the same time, our regional hub city, about forty minutes drive with parking garages not too outrageous on weekends, became a nationally renowned restaurant destination.  Anniversaries, mostly there.  Weekend outings for downtown shopping included a dessert and coffee at a posh cafeteria with creative selections.  Birthdays sometimes there, sometimes mid-scale local.

Habits evolve.  Kids depart.  My interest in mastering my kitchen took hold.  Birthdays now extravagantly created by myself in a remodeled kitchen, served with elegance in the adjacent dining room.  Meal preparation shifted from chore to pleasure.  Dining out plummeted in frequency.  An occasional breakfast at one of several places, nearly all locally owned, became the escape.  Bill for one, rarely over $15 including tip.  During weekends on call, I would carve out part of a Sunday morning for a gluttonous but cheap breakfast buffet across from the medical center.  

Eventually, even anniversaries were prepared at home to the top of my skill, leaving travel as the main incentive for seeking restaurants.

Covid created a demarcation point.  Isolation rules changed restaurants from places where people gather to places where people acquire prepared meals to take home.  Pre-dating this, however, was the emergence of our mega supermarkets whose niches also included sections where shoppers can take home ready to eat meals, usually at a lower cost than restaurant take-out.  Covid also exposed the fragility of income.  People in the hospitality industry often earned minimum wages, supplemented by tips from diners.  These were now gone.  People confined to their homes ate their meals at their homes.  A lot of workers found themselves jobless.  Eventually the virus would run its course, allowing life as we knew it before to return, though not in the same way.

My restaurant experience had become very different.  Menu prices rose considerably.  Dinner for two at the places we would previously stop by on a whim, those family places, brought us a final tab about half again what we were used to.  As a financially secure person, I upped my tipping considerably, understanding the servers' circumstances.  Wages increased for a lot of reasons.  Legislatively, minimum wages rose.  Worker shortages, people who had been hurt by Covid effects on their employment shifted industries, led to further pay hikes that eventually become menu prices.  The content of the menus changed, as some supplies became less secure.  Chicken, abundant and economical, began to dominate menus.  Fish, my staple, appeared much less.  Even the price of a pizza rose, despite the national chains' focus on restraining operational costs through investment in efficiency.  I largely stopped going out for any meal other than breakfast, preferring what I could create at home each night.  That ultimately included anniversaries.

This year I had toyed with a few anniversary menus.  The date was an inconvenient one, midweek, following another event.  My wife suggested we return to an annual elaborate meal at an upscale place.  She chose one, and we went.  I had looked at the menu, which had suitable content.

This was not always an upscale dining place.  It had begun more than thirty years earlier as a nook on a side street of a major university where I attended a graduate program.  It sat a block from the law school, bookstore, library, and engineering complex. Its location put it comfortably separate from the many lunch trucks that lined a different part of the campus closer to its medical complex and dorms, where students often got their lunch.  Commuters taking the regional rail would have to pass it on the way to their labs or offices.  Occasionally, I would divert my usual route from my assigned parking garage to get a cinnamon roll on my way to the medical complex.  When our group hosted a visitor, our department chief would have a group of us take the visitor there for lunch.  Nice.  Reliable.  Not Extravagant.  And with a suitable competitor on the same block, which I preferred for that morning pastry indulgence.

The competitor no longer has its presence at the university.  This restaurant not only does, but has expanded to suburban satellites, including the location near me.  Our tab ran $139.  

Dining's expenditure takes many forms.  There's the food, selection, ambiance.  Who I dined with dominated all of these.  There is also a delegation of effort.  When I create an elegant meal, I like the effort.  And I could have been with the same beloved person.  I have selection as I design the menu.  My wife accepts what I choose. 

We arrived.  Easy drive to a suburban upscale shopping center.  I drive by frequently, as the dealer who services my car sits across the street and Costco where I purchase bifocals on alternate years has its complex around the corner.  This retail complex has stores in a row along its backbone with several free standing restaurant buildings, including ours, placed along the perimeter.  Parking is abundant and without fee.  We walked into the building, where the hostess confirmed our reservation.  A few other diners waited with us, though not a lot.  The restaurant's capacity far exceeded the current number of patrons.  Another person escorted us to our table, one placed in a room with a few other tables, though with ample space between them.  A large round table sat eight other diners, the only people other than us in that room.  A waiter introduced himself, a young man likely earning money to tide him over as he pursues a different career.  We read the menu, and placed our order.  The various items came in sequence.

To be fair, I could not duplicate what we ate from my kitchen.  The wines by glass, marked up above what we usually spend at a restaurant, would be accessible from my usual package store in whole bottles.  Beer was about the expected price and included unique selections from small regional craft breweries.  I had one of those, something I would not find elsewhere.  My wife ordered a cream soup.  That I could probably approximate.  Despite the pricey nature of the place, they did not offer us bread and butter.  In fact, they offered Bread and Butter for Two for $12 on their starter selections.  We each ordered the same entrée.  It came with a seared fillet of fish sitting atop a vegetables and Israeli couscous medley.  I could not duplicate this medley.  I've made this type of fish in the past.  It is very bony, and difficult to filet.   

I stopped ordering dessert a number of years ago as prices accelerated.  This time my wife wanted dessert, and we were splurging to be with each other.  She selected better than me.  Itemized bill:  What we ate $110, 3% surcharge so we pay the credit card issuer's fee while they get their money promptly, state tax, reasonably generous tip though not enough to get the waiter to the different career that he likely seeks.

Fewer diners.  More revenue per diner.  It seems Covid transformed dining out.  It forced us to eat from our own kitchens, which may have been a good consequence.  It raised the income of the worker, though at the price of fewer workers to serve fewer diners.  The national chains, often experiencing declines in patronage, once rescued the younger couples too tired to make dinner after a stressful work day.  Now we draw our second wind to make that dinner.  The respite from the home kitchen has shifted to celebratory, the few times people really want something they cannot duplicate for themselves.  We watch the Grand Chefs on FoodTV.  We mostly eat at home, with maybe a modicum of upgrades from those culinary masters on our screens.  More effort. More satisfaction. Less expense.