5 ms·
If there's an item of American culture you may be missing, it's probably that American restaurants can be very cheap.
by waqf 11y ago
If there's an item of American culture you may be missing, it's probably that American restaurants can be very cheap.
- nine_k 11y agoIn particular, a McDonald's is considered a restaurant in the US, and there are restaurants that are lower-key and cheaper than McDonald's. Of course, high-end restaurant also do exist.
- pjlegato 11y agoAmerican here. Nobody I know would ever call McDonald's a "restaurant."
- gamblor956 11y agoAmerican here. Everyone I know calls McDonald's a restaurant. They may choose not to eat there for health or ideological reasons, but everyone agrees that it is a restaurant, and has been a restaurant since its inception decades ago.
- steveklabnik 11y agoThe industry calls them "quick serve restaurants" as well.
- pjlegato 11y agoMcDonald's is in some technical, economic sense a "restaurant" in that it serves food for pay. In non-technical everyday usage, the word "restaurant" implies table service, excluding places where you must carry your own food around.
- steveklabnik 11y agoIt really depends. Where I come from, 'Should we go to a restaurant' is rarely used. We'd usually say 'eating out'. And McDonalds was definitely 'eating out'.
- zodiac 11y ago> In non-technical everyday usage, the word "restaurant" implies table service The english language varies considerably by geographical region, the speaker's socioeconomic class, etc. Your statement is not universally true; I've met people to whom it's true and people to whom it's not.
- pjlegato 11y agoIf I say to a friend, "What restaurants are around here?" nobody I know would ever reply with "McDonald's." It is a "fast food place," not a "restaurant." A "restaurant" has table service and a higher standard of food quality. The original comment said that Americans consider McDonald's a restaurant, in implicit contrast to unnamed other places where McDonald's does not qualify as a "restaurant," as a way to suggest that Americans have lower standards than others for food quality. I am pointing out that, at least among the people I've known my whole life here in the US, this is definitely not the case; McDonald's and other fast food places are not in any sense considered "restaurants," no more than a gas station that sells microwave burritos is a "restaurant."
- eropple 11y agoDo you call Chipotle a restaurant?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jodrellblank 11y agoThe original comment said that Americans consider McDonald's a restaurant, in implicit contrast to unnamed other places where McDonald's does not qualify as a "restaurant," as a way to suggest that Americans have lower standards than others for food quality. I hope you limbered up sufficiently before stretching so far to find a way to take that as an insult.
- PhasmaFelis 11y agoI'm with Gamblor. That may be your experience, but in my experience McDonald's barely sneaks into the definition of "restaurant." It could certainly be mentioned in response to "What restaurants are around here?" A restaurant would be anywhere that a group can go to have food prepared for them, and then sit down and eat it. Most gas stations don't qualify on either count. (And incidentally I've been to some really excellent, chef-owned restaurants that don't have table service. Cajun places, mainly. Cajun seems to occupy a weird intersection between "classy" and "cheap" that no other cuisine can enter.)
- TeMPOraL 11y ago> and there are restaurants that are lower-key and cheaper than McDonald's Key point: apparently McD is cheap in the United States. Not so much in the eastern parts of Europe.
- manarth 11y agoMcDonalds might call themselves a restaurant (and I'm sure many others also do, Burger King, Wimpy, KFC, etc)…but I'm sure most people wouldn't describe them as a restaurant - it's a convenient marketing term, nothing more.
- PhasmaFelis 11y agoI'm in the US, and I don't think I've ever seen a restaurant cheaper than McDonald's. You can get a filling meal there for $2 if you order from the dollar menu. Even at most other cheap fast food places, you couldn't do that for less than $5.
- Alleluja 11y agonot as cheap as some European ones. What he is missing is specialization in the US. If someone considers themselves "developer" in the US they won't spend 2 hours a day cooking. They think it is cheaper to spend money on someone else cooking for them and code for these 2 hours. Blatantly idiotic.
- rogerbinns 11y agoAlso the portions are large (which everyone already knows). But it is also culturally normal to take a doggie bag of the leftovers home with you, to supply additional meals. ie one restaurant meal is good for more than one meal. This arose because the easiest way for a restaurant to increase revenue is to increase portion sizes and hence the price.
- goatforce5 11y agoI've eaten at places in the US where they're straight up confused/offended if you don't doggie bag your leftovers. "What? Was there something wrong?" "No, i'm in a hotel and don't really have anywhere to store or reheat it." "Yeah, but... Are you sure you want it?"
- brookside 11y agob/c waste is bad. もったいない as the Japanese say.
- SCHiM 11y agoHaha, yes. A friend of mine went to live in the states for a while. The first time he saw people taking their unfinished meals with them he thought he was eating in some kind of restaurant/food shelter combination. Needless to say, he quickly caught on to the trend and now actively advocates it over the European system.
- fludlight 11y agoWhere in the world is taking leftovers home NOT normal?
- breakingcups 11y agoEurope.