At the same time, when I go out for dinner at home, the best restaurant experiences are always when I feel 'almost full' when my plate is completely empty, and still have some room left for dessert. Nothing needs to go to waste, and I don't need to take doggy-bags home so I can eat more of the same bland (and now re-heated, soggy) food the next day, as is common in the US (doggy bags are an extremely rare sight where I live). The 'dining out' experience could hardly be any more different comparing the US to the restaurants at home. To make things worse, prices are also way higher in the US, at least the more urban areas in the east and west.
I remember one time staying in an AirBNB in the US, talking to the host who used to own a classic american diner. She had the exact same thoughts about food quality and portion sizes as we did, and told us she actually tried to do it different in her diner. Customers would by default get a small plate of food, but could order more for free if it wasn't enough. For some bizarre reason her customers hated it and kept complaining about the portion size. So she switched back, and almost no-one ever finished their food completely again.
Very quaint obsession with quantity, if you ask me.
It would be so much easier if it was just what I'm used to here: if you just order food, you'll get enough for a 'normal' eater. You can always go bigger or smaller, depending on if you are a 'big eater' or not. The default in the US seems to be that the size of the standard order needs to satisfy a giant construction worker who hasn't eaten for two days.
I remember ordering blueberry pancakes for breakfast once, and got a pile a that was almost a foot high. Even though the pancakes were actually pretty good, I think I finished less then 1/4th of them. That just makes no sense.
I feel a great need to finish what I am served, and is has been a hard fought battle to not do that when the portion sizes are as ridiculously oversized as they can be in America.
Eating with my spouse helps, as we can always split plates, but still. Vastly prefer smaller portion sizes.
A bit gauche, I realize, but better that than overeating. Rather striking to have such a concrete illustration that restaurants were giving me fully twice as much food as I really needed to be eating, too.
The one that sticks out most is the emotional abuse I'd received from friends parent's when I couldn't finish my entire plate (but still ate a little bit of everything).
Fuck them for that.
If I order an entree at a restaurant, I want that meal to be my biggest meal of the day, with rare exception. A meal at a restaurant is a special occasion, and should be a source of hospitality. The prime way for the restaurant to provide this hospitality is to accomodate my hunger! If I am still hungry at all after ordering and finishing an entree, then I am not satisfied.
I'm totally fine with eating a bunch of cheap filler sides (fries, rice, etc) to make me full. Often times, I feel like more expensive restaurants do a worse job at actually filling you up with the entree, because they want to tack on appetizers, small plates, etc. I leave these sorts of restaurants angry sometimes. Just give me food, dang it!
To reply to your thoughts, I always had read that restaurants and food in general were cheaper in the U.S. Curious that you found the opposite to be true.
In America, we stuff ourselves without realizing we're doing so.
(I live here too, I'm just poking fun at our culture)
As an expat dining in the US is stupidly expensive. I've had 3-course lunches at french restaurants that didn't cost more than $20. I consider myself lucky if I can eke $30/pp at the local wingery after food, drinks, taxes, and gratuity.
If you compare the same quality food, it is way more expensive in the US. I can get a very decent 3-course meal here (Netherlands) for $20, maybe $30 if you include drinks (wine, beer). To get the same quality food in CA (and I've visited many, many places there) I would have to spend at least $50 without drinks, without tips.
Of course I can get food for $20 or $30 in CA at every corner of the street as well, but the quality will be way below what I expect for that money. The difference in perspective is probably that in the US there seem to be 9 low-end places for every decend mid-range restaurant, while here it's more like 50-50. Not trying to be a snob here, that's just my perception.
At the high-end it's way worse even, by the way. For $100 I can get a royal 6-course high-cuisine meal with accompanying wines for every course here, even at some restaurants rated with a Michelin star. I've been to places in e.g. Palo Alto, which were pretty good, but nowhere near the level of even a single michelin star, and the bill would approach $200 per person after including drinks and tips. Portion size was not a problem in these cases, by the way ;-)
also, good western european(?) food (spanish/french/italian/etc) is more expensive than, say, good asian or latin american food. the plating of food into courses will bias you toward those more expensive restaurants, by the way. my favorite restaurants are typically single plate/bowl by design, which you can then share family-style by ordering a few items.
i'd also echo the point that good food costs way more in northern california than in southern california. socal just has many more cheaper, good restaurants to choose from.
http://languageoffood.blogspot.com/2009/08/entree.html?m=1
What about the French usage? The French use of the word entrée in Escoffier's 1921 Le Guide Culinaire was still the traditional one ('made' hot meat dishes served in the classic sequence before a roast). Escoffier classifies as entrées almost any dish that we would now consider a main course: steaks (entrecotes or filet de boeuf, tournedos), cassoulet, lamb or veal cutlets, ham, sausage, braised leg of lamb (gigot), stews or sautes of chicken, pigeon or turkey, braised goose, foie gras. Escoffier has over 500 pages of entrée recipes. Only roast fowl, and small game animals are classified as roasts, in a small 14 page roast section.
You state that it's difficult for a fast food restaurant to manage a la carte purchases when that's exactly what they are designed to do. Their entire business model is based around an a la carte menu.
You then justify larger portions as a means to mitigate customers ordering additional portions. The reality is that for most casual or low end dining the customer knows what to expect and orders appropriately. At best your assertion about large portions would only work to satisfy first time customers.
Fast food can bring the total cost closer to the raw ingredients by increasing the utilization of real estate, capital, and labor. A fine dining restaurant needs to dedicate much more real estate and staff to each customer, since they cannot serve as many customers in one time period. At the same time, they probably need at least some higher cost ingredients to satisfy the different expectations of a customer willing to pay higher prices.
I don't know if it is still a thing, but last time I went to a TGI Fridays (a few years ago now) they had a menu option to make the portions smaller for a couple of bucks off. The caveat is that it didn't increase the quality of the food--and that's kind of a problem for a TGI Fridays.
Finally, if you're going to something that calls itself a diner, you normally aren't expecting fine dining. The expectation is a big old plate of greasy fried chow. There is an expectation mismatch that is going to generate a lot of complaints.
That said, I totally agree that way too many restaurants in the US subscribe to the "if we can't make it good, at least we can make it big" philosophy. There are certain establishments I won't even patronize because they're so ridiculous in this regard, like the Cheesecake Factory. "Here is your 4lb of spaghetti, but be sure to save room for the 2lb slice of cheesecake we are named for!"
That's why you can get different toppings on either side of the pizza- so two people don't have to buy two separate pizzas.
One thing that kills table turns are people who stay for dessert or coffee. On way to prevent that is to serve plates overloaded with cheap carb fillers (rice, fries, etc). People feel obligated to eat what is on the plate and when stuffed won’t linger.
Other tips are to use hard surfaces (floors, walls, ceilings) so that the acoustics make it hard to talk; move tables to the center of the room; have waiters show up with check-in-hand when they ask about desserts; drop the check early; keep the restaurant too cold (too hot, men complain, too cold women leave); and put TVs on the walls (kills conversations).
This is purely observational based on looking at fast food restaurants in the city and suburbs. It would be interesting to see how it varies across regions.
If I order a Big Mac in New York it pretty much is the same as one in Omaha and is pretty much the same as it was 20 years ago. Necessary changes that are made are deliberately small and the quality is basically the same over time in my experience.
I'm not even certain if they should try to keep up. Sure, they can offer me hummus and crudites for a light lunch when I'm on the road. But grocery stores already have that covered, and at a price point that's probably much lower than McDonald's could manage. And they can offer me beans, rice and fixins, but Qdoba will already sell me two meals' worth of that for less than twice the cost of a single meal at McDonald's, so again, there just isn't a lot of gold for them in them thar hills.
In the late 90s everything at Subway was prepared fresh in store and the meat was single origin. Today everything comes in bags and the "meat" is lower in quality than the crappiest of hot dog.
Chipotle went from fresh in 2001 to unsanitary burrito factory in 2017. They're being followed down the hole cloesly by Moe's and a bit further back by Willy's.
Starbucks went from a high end coffee house in the 90s to a candy store.
Dunkin Donuts in the 90s made fresh donuts nightly in store, today they have them shipped in from factory and aren't any better than grocery store bakery donuts, just more varied.
Perhaps that's the natural order of most fast food as they chase margins. Death by a thousand compromises.
I suspect the less cosmopolitan areas of the US are very similar though.