Why is there so much premium on western/european food?

[Anonymous]

Take French or Italian restaurants for example. You will almost always undoubtedly pay through the friggin’ nose for those types of cuisines, despite the fact that a restaurant in those categories may be throughly mid. It’s not like Italian food here in America is often prepared with that many complex techniques and exotic ingredients. People will pay $30 for a basic pasta dish, which might even be prepped with boxed dry pastas. Contrast that to say Chinese, Thai, Mexican etc. where customers expect cheap eats for high quality food. Have you seen the prep and number of ingredients that go into say making a Thai curry from scratch? It takes far more prep work than 99% of pasta dishes, yet you’d be hard pressed to sell Thai food to customers for $40 per plate. Or Mexican places making all their masa from scratch while cooking marinated meats for hours. Oh so an Italian place may make pasta from scratch? Big whoop. There are so many Chinese places that make hand pulled noodles and dumplings from scratch, yet people expect to pay $15 or less per bowl of noodles and probably even less than $10 for a plate of dumplings. And French food is even more overpriced. Big whoop, throw in salt, tons of butter, and a few herbs into most dishes that have one dimensional flavors. The French never really wow your palate with pungent herbs, sourness, spicy, and sweet. So why do people have no qualms about paying exorbitant premiums for bland European foods, yet foods in other ethic categories often require far more complex prep yet people want high quality and for it to be ‘cheap eats’? It’s pretty egregious to charge over $20 for any pasta dish when it is a low technique and limited ingredient entree.

[Anonymous]

I guess everyone is just racist!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I guess everyone is just racist!

Pretty much.

[Anonymous]

Some of it is the physical restaurant. I rarely see nice places to eat Thai or Chinese, whereas it's possible to find fancy dining with Italian or French.

I'm with you on the French. Their food is thoroughly overrated.

[Anonymous]

I can't eat cilantro. People use way too much of it and it tastes like soap.

[Anonymous]

I've had the same rant about Italian food for years. It's one of the easiest cuisines in the world to cook. Is it tasty? Yes. Can anyone cook it well? Yes. There is nothing complex about it. Good ingredients make the dishes.

Some of the Asian cuisines on the other hand.....lots of work and technique.

I disagree with you about French cuisine though.

[Anonymous]

There used to be cheap French and Italian restaurants around - like Italian Market in Philly and French bistro places. Certainly there are expensive Asian restaurants. I think the more interesting question is why in a standard restaurant there will be a default Italian-American pasta dish, but not say a default Asian noodle dish like Pad Thai?

[Anonymous]

I'm French. I don't know why French cuisine is expensive and not that great here. It's really not hard to produce a rare steak au poivre with pommes allumettes! Or choucroute. Or galette de sarrasin. Or any of a number of totally normal French dishes. Sigh.

I cook from scratch and when we eat out, it's usually at Asian places. I ALSO agree that they are usually not comfortable! We've resorted to take-out recently. I miss the quiet cozy ambience of the little Japanese restaurant next to my house. It did not make it out of the pandemic, despite my numerous orders and large tips...

[Anonymous]

Watch David Chang’s stuff on Netflix.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of it is the physical restaurant. I rarely see nice places to eat Thai or Chinese, whereas it's possible to find fancy dining with Italian or French.

I'm with you on the French. Their food is thoroughly overrated.

Because it is a chicken and egg. Who wants to dump millions into fine dining fir Chinese or Thai if the vast majority of consumers associate it ‘cheap eats’ and it’d be hard pressed to get them to spend $30-50 per entree? Yet look at an Italian place, they can serve you mid food like chicken parm with boxed pasta and charge you $30+ per plate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can't eat cilantro. People use way too much of it and it tastes like soap.

WHAAAAT does this have to do with the topic?? We aren't talking about your preferences - we are talking about prices and perceptions.
go away

[Anonymous]

The answer is, in a completely apolitical way, that the US’s heritage is primarily Western European, so “fine dining” historically meant European. The US is still majority European-descended. If you go to areas that are not, you will find plenty of restaurants of different fine dining traditions - head out to Annandale for Korean for example. On the flip side, we don’t have strong immigrant French or Italian communities anymore that create a base for affordable small restaurants with the national cuisine. So those cuisines are slotted into general American fare. But where we do have strong immigrant communities (like Ethiopian in DC, Vietnamese in Falls Church) they form the economic basis for affordable restaurants.

Now American Chinese restaurants (the neighborhood type with the long menus) are an entirely different economic phenomena with a fascinating history.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of it is the physical restaurant. I rarely see nice places to eat Thai or Chinese, whereas it's possible to find fancy dining with Italian or French.

I'm with you on the French. Their food is thoroughly overrated.

Because it is a chicken and egg. Who wants to dump millions into fine dining fir Chinese or Thai if the vast majority of consumers associate it ‘cheap eats’ and it’d be hard pressed to get them to spend $30-50 per entree? Yet look at an Italian place, they can serve you mid food like chicken parm with boxed pasta and charge you $30+ per plate.

You never heard of places like Moon Rabbit, Slanted Door, Hiraya, any number of luxe sushi restaurants with omakase?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There used to be cheap French and Italian restaurants around - like Italian Market in Philly and French bistro places. Certainly there are expensive Asian restaurants. I think the more interesting question is why in a standard restaurant there will be a default Italian-American pasta dish, but not say a default Asian noodle dish like Pad Thai?

French Bistros cheap? Pfff….look at Le Diplomate in DC. Steak Frites $34, which is just steak and French fries, lol. Roasted chicken with mashed potatoes…$28. Bistros du Coin. All steamed mussels basically $30. Every entree runs $30-40. You can’t tell me beef bourguignon takes more prep than say making a Thai curry where you have to pre roast tons of aromatics, ground by hand, and cook, because I often make beef bourguignon and it isn’t hard at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of it is the physical restaurant. I rarely see nice places to eat Thai or Chinese, whereas it's possible to find fancy dining with Italian or French.

I'm with you on the French. Their food is thoroughly overrated.

Because it is a chicken and egg. Who wants to dump millions into fine dining fir Chinese or Thai if the vast majority of consumers associate it ‘cheap eats’ and it’d be hard pressed to get them to spend $30-50 per entree? Yet look at an Italian place, they can serve you mid food like chicken parm with boxed pasta and charge you $30+ per plate.

You never heard of places like Moon Rabbit, Slanted Door, Hiraya, any number of luxe sushi restaurants with omakase?

Japanese food is the only one that gets premium treatment from westerners. It’s kinda funny too, because Japanese food is pretty bland. It must be a thing - the more bland and one dimensional your food is, the more premium it gets.