4 ms·

I feel like I'm stating the obvious here, but prices are set by a combination of both demand and supply. The article is focusing mostly on the demand side, but

by whack 10y ago

I feel like I'm stating the obvious here, but prices are set by a combination of both demand and supply. The article is focusing mostly on the demand side, but the supply factor makes a huge difference as well. There are significant immigrant populations from Mexico/China/India/Thailand, which means that someone opening a restaurant catering to these cuisines, can hire "ethnic chefs" at an affordable price. In contrast, how big is the recently-French population in America really? And how many professional French cooks can one really find? Even if the demand for french food is much lower than the demand for Chinese food, the lack of supply alone will drive up the price. Note also the second effect of the above. If someone wanted to open a Chinese restaurant, they can hire a affordable Chinese cook and market the restaurant as a mid-price restaurant. Or they can hire an expensive Chinese cook and market the restaurant as a high-end venue. In contrast, if someone wanted to open a french restaurant, they don't have the option of hiring a cheap French cook. It's go big, or go home... which means that the pool of all French restaurants, is going to be heavily biased towards upscale, expensive restaurants. If you simply take the average menu price of all zagat-rated French restaurants, and compare them to the average menu price of all zagat-rated Chinese restaurants, you're going to find a big difference in these average numbers, but a lot of it will simply be a result of the above price-bias. If you're trying to investigate people's demand/perception for a certain cuisine, the above results are going to be a highly distorted one.

beat 10y ago
Modern French cuisine was codified by Escoffier. Not only did he nail down what haute cuisine was in terms of technique, he codified a process of restaurant management, based on the military chain of command. Escoffier trained up-and-coming chefs on how to structure large kitchens (up to hundreds of staffers) and how to handle budget and marketing, to get the "right" customers. In other words, he invented the modern large-scale upscale restaurant business. American and European cooking schools are all modeled on Escoffier's techniques, as passed down through generations of chefs going back to those worked under him directly. It's not just about the cooking. It's the white tablecloths, the wine list, the dress code - it's about a restaurant experience that says as much about who the customer is and what their role in society is as it says about food. Why require that gentlemen wear a jacket and a tie for dinner? Does it add to the cost of the food? No. It's about standards. If you offer a gentleman a tie so he may eat, you've said something about his station in life. That's why waiters at such fancy places seem like they're insulting you - they're actually insulting you! Because of this, the restaurants are expensive. Of course they're expensive. Not because the food is superior, but because the kind of people who would eat there expect it. At the best, putting prices on the menu is a faux pas. If you have to think about the cost, you don't belong.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  When I was a cook I worked under a french chef and read Escoffier. Le guide culinaire is a fascinating read, meals for kings with pigeon stuffed into hen, stuffed in a goose, stuffed into a pig and cooked in a coal fire oven for 12 hours.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  > That's why waiters at such fancy places seem like they're insulting you - they're actually insulting you! Because of this, the restaurants are expensive. Of course they're expensive. Not because the food is superior, but because the kind of people who would eat there expect it. At the best, putting prices on the menu is a faux pas. If you have to think about the cost, you don't belong. It sounds like you're saying that the purpose of French restaurants is to signal your wealth/social class, and if you want good food that's worth what you're paying, you should go somewhere else.
  - barrkel 10y ago
    And on the counterpoint, the best meals of my life have mostly been in the French style, usually with matched French wines too.
    - beat 10y ago
      Yeah. Something I think that was lost in the original article was that French and Japanese technique really are superior to other cuisines. There's a reason they're so dominant.
  - careersuicide 10y ago
    I think you're 100% correct. But, I also think that even implying that that is the purpose is itself a form of signaling of your wealth/social class. "I'm much too smart/frugal/down to earth/in the know about where the real good food is to be fooled by cloth napkins and dim lights." Signaling is funny like that. We often discuss it in the context of letting others know how up the social ladder we are or want to be perceived as being. But at least as often signaling is used to convey to others that we're not at the top, we're right where we belong, with the other members of our tribe.

by whack 10y ago

beat 10y ago

Modern French cuisine was codified by Escoffier. Not only did he nail down what haute cuisine was in terms of technique, he codified a process of restaurant management, based on the military chain of command. Escoffier trained up-and-coming chefs on how to structure large kitchens (up to hundreds of staffers) and how to handle budget and marketing, to get the "right" customers. In other words, he invented the modern large-scale upscale restaurant business. American and European cooking schools are all modeled on Escoffier's techniques, as passed down through generations of chefs going back to those worked under him directly. It's not just about the cooking. It's the white tablecloths, the wine list, the dress code - it's about a restaurant experience that says as much about who the customer is and what their role in society is as it says about food. Why require that gentlemen wear a jacket and a tie for dinner? Does it add to the cost of the food? No. It's about standards. If you offer a gentleman a tie so he may eat, you've said something about his station in life. That's why waiters at such fancy places seem like they're insulting you - they're actually insulting you! Because of this, the restaurants are expensive. Of course they're expensive. Not because the food is superior, but because the kind of people who would eat there expect it. At the best, putting prices on the menu is a faux pas. If you have to think about the cost, you don't belong.

cmdrfred 10y ago
When I was a cook I worked under a french chef and read Escoffier. Le guide culinaire is a fascinating read, meals for kings with pigeon stuffed into hen, stuffed in a goose, stuffed into a pig and cooked in a coal fire oven for 12 hours.
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
> That's why waiters at such fancy places seem like they're insulting you - they're actually insulting you! Because of this, the restaurants are expensive. Of course they're expensive. Not because the food is superior, but because the kind of people who would eat there expect it. At the best, putting prices on the menu is a faux pas. If you have to think about the cost, you don't belong. It sounds like you're saying that the purpose of French restaurants is to signal your wealth/social class, and if you want good food that's worth what you're paying, you should go somewhere else.
- barrkel 10y ago
  And on the counterpoint, the best meals of my life have mostly been in the French style, usually with matched French wines too.
  - beat 10y ago
    Yeah. Something I think that was lost in the original article was that French and Japanese technique really are superior to other cuisines. There's a reason they're so dominant.
- careersuicide 10y ago
  I think you're 100% correct. But, I also think that even implying that that is the purpose is itself a form of signaling of your wealth/social class. "I'm much too smart/frugal/down to earth/in the know about where the real good food is to be fooled by cloth napkins and dim lights." Signaling is funny like that. We often discuss it in the context of letting others know how up the social ladder we are or want to be perceived as being. But at least as often signaling is used to convey to others that we're not at the top, we're right where we belong, with the other members of our tribe.