Originally Posted by
BearX220
You're paying for a total experience; the piece of meat (or whatever) is just one component. If the total experience is poorly designed - bad or slow service, bad atmosphere, etc. -- then expectations aren't met and, voila, guests start to focus on the price of the thing.
The idea behind restaurant experience design is to force price into the background. I've had $50 steaks as part of such a nice evening, it never occurred to me to focus on price. And if you go to Tad's in NYC you can have a $10 steak that will make you think about offering $5 for it.
Only a rube complains about menu prices in a restaurant that has everything going right.
Oh, definitely, I 100% agree with this. I guess what I was trying to say was that while I was willing to pay $50 for a $50 experience, if I paid $50 for a $20 experience (bearing in mind the synergy of food, service, atmosphere), then I'd want a comment about the price in the review.
But that said, good food is essential. If I'm paying $70-100/head, and the service/atmosphere is outstanding, but the food is poor, I'm still going to want to see a price comment in the review.
Originally Posted by malsf1
I would agree that one might not know the portion size before going to a restaurant, but often people expect to get mountains of food, no matter what price is paid. Having been in the restaurant business in a former life, you would be surprised to know that people DO complain about the price. Often I adjusted their checks as a courtesy and for goodwill, but many people do equate restauarant quality with portion size, without considering the quality of the products being used and the expertise of the executive chef in creating the menu and food preparation.
I'm not one to look for big portions for the sake of gorging myself, or anything like that. But I do get annoyed with the small dots from squeeze guns that are so popular at the moment, since they barely give you enough to get a taste of that element of the dish. Restaurant quality definitely isn't necessarily correlated with serving size, but I'd like to think that we've moved beyond the "absurd food in tiny portions" of the 1980s nouvelle cuisine.
I'm surprised to hear about the check adjustment and people complaining, but then customer service is a nightmare no matter where you do it. I was in tech customer support for a year...I'm sure I qualify for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder medications.