Originally Posted by
nkedel
Given the GBP#1 is equivalent to US$1 in costs on the ground there, it doesn't seem that expensive in that sense; I've had plenty of $20 lunches at nicer places. $32 USD (errr, $30.32 per google... dang, time to visit the UK again) is a pricier meal, but I've had plenty of casual dining meals where my share was about that after tax and tip, and that's often less than an entree at fancier places (before drinks, share of an appetizer if any, and the tendency of fine dining to make sides separate, let alone tax and tip)... almost always for places by good beef.
See, I can't see for breakfast what a master chef can add. For meals where I'd be more inclined to try interesting and different food, sure. For one of the same handful of breakfast orders where I want them the way I want them, rather than a chef's vision of them, paying for a fancy place and a master chef is rather likely to eff them up.
Same reason why I don't eat mac'n'cheese at any restaurant (I'm sorry, I've got a recipe for doing it at home that suits my tastes exactly and is dead easy) and I no longer eat hamburgers at any fancified restaurant which tries to charge more for them a regular burger joint; anything they could do to justify the higher price almost certainly consists of effing-it-up.
Lunch or dinner there looks much more interesting, IMO.
I've seen a couple of posts mentioning equivalency between pounds and dollars, but I'm not sure I understand.
At today's exchange rate, 1 pound is equal to $1.51. 20 pounds, then, is $30.18, which is a lot of money for a meal. I've spent that much on meals before, but I still consider it a lot, at least by my standards.
As to "effing" things up, well, if that's the way you feel about world-class chefs, that's your opinion. I have never personally eaten food prepared by one of those guys, but I have eaten at enough cheap places, chain restaurants, and mid-level restaurants to know that there is a difference in the quality of the food as you go from one level to another. A burger at G&M Seafood near BWI is going to beat the socks off a burger from the neighborhood sub shop down the street, and I don't doubt for a moment that a burger from one of the better restaurants in New York or even London will beat G&M.
Nothing beats G&M's Maryland style crab cakes, though. Nobody outside Maryland does maryland style foods right, except the rare Maryland transplant.