What's new
By:
Pinball info

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Price of UK Restaurants These Days

DRD

DRD

Site Supporter
5Years
Joined
Oct 26, 2014
Messages
5,545
Location
Newark
We have been staying in Manchester City Centre (where we lived for 10 years until 2013) for a couple of days and I am amazed at the cost of restaurants here.

A mid market Italian from our past - location pretty average, nowt special about it, food slightly better than average .....

Any fish dish £35 and up
Any 250g fillet steak dish £35 and up
Any chicken breast dish £23 and up

A mid market Indian from our past - average location, nowt special about it, food slightly better than average.....

Shared tandoori meat starter for 2 £18
Chicken jalfrezi main £14
Cobra £6.20 a pint

Are folk on here happy to pay these sorts of prices ?

Food and energy costs are both well up, I know. But restaurant inflation seems far higher than ready meal inflation and the food in these restaurants is no better than M and S stuff you just warm up at home.

'er indoors and I are just not seeing the "value" here.

My dad ran a chippy so I have always been vaguely connected to the catering industry and I worry about the viability of these businesses
 
Going for a meal is bloody expensive nowadays.

I’ve given up pretending to be shocked when it’s north of £200 for two people. Last month I went to a seafood restaurant. The starters worked out as £30 each. Admittedly it was lovely food but the total bill was insane. One glass of a house champagne was £40 🤬

Even takeaways are expensive. £50-£60 for three people and the quality often isn’t great.
 
Seems expensive to me, just looked up the nice Italian we sometimes visit.

Fish dish (except lobster) Around £20
250g fillet steak dish £26

Local Indian, bit dated but nice enough food

Tandoori mixed starter for two £14
Chicken jalfrezi main £11

Not sure on drink prices,

I'm sorta finding the opposite, supermarket deals are rubbish and basics have shot up, restaurant pricing static
 
Last edited:
went to an Italian in Chislehurst- quite a well to do area..
I had bruschetta to start - £6.20 for 2 pieces of toast..
Spaghetti Bolognaise main - £17.. tasted OK but something which you could make at home to similar standard.

Guess you pay for the ambience of the place..
 
£6.20 for a starter is cheap even if it’s toast.

I remember the 79s/early 80s. Eating out was virtually unheard of for us due to the cost.

Now despite insane prices people are still going out. Sooner or later all that card debt will catch up with them
 
  • Like
Reactions: DRD
Going out for food now is what it is now , but a good tip is buy the bottle or bottles of wine and it you don’t drink it all you can take it home with you,loads cheaper I found 🤪
 
Pint of Moretti in my local Italian is £8.50 a pint.

Two of us going locally for a curry and a couple of beers is now about £130. Expensive indeed!
 
DRD said:
We have been staying in Manchester City Centre (where we lived for 10 years until 2013) for a couple of days and I am amazed at the cost of restaurants here.

A mid market Italian from our past - location pretty average, nowt special about it, food slightly better than average .....

Any fish dish £35 and up
Any 250g fillet steak dish £35 and up
Any chicken breast dish £23 and up

A mid market Indian from our past - average location, nowt special about it, food slightly better than average.....

Shared tandoori meat starter for 2 £18
Chicken jalfrezi main £14
Cobra £6.20 a pint

Are folk on here happy to pay these sorts of prices ?

Food and energy costs are both well up, I know. But restaurant inflation seems far higher than ready meal inflation and the food in these restaurants is no better than M and S stuff you just warm up at home.

'er indoors and I are just not seeing the "value" here.

My dad ran a chippy so I have always been vaguely connected to the catering industry and I worry about the viability of these businesses
Click to expand...
Manchester city centre is premium now - so not entirely surprised at the menu prices you listed.

There are still some bargains to be had when eating out, but normally have to go hunting for them on review sites and the like. We are definitely through the period from c. mid 2000s with the initial proliferation of fast casual until around Covid, where eating out was actually pretty affordable.
 
To be fair, I took the family to Manchester last year to see Maneskin and we ate a decent Indian meal inc drinks for £40 all in. It was more like a late night Indian cafe and had limited options but everything was freshly cooked and delicious.

I wouldn’t take someone there on a first date though!
 
johnwhitfield said:
£6.20 for a starter is cheap even if it’s toast.

I remember the 79s/early 80s. Eating out was virtually unheard of for us due to the cost.

Now despite insane prices people are still going out. Sooner or later all that card debt will catch up with them
Click to expand...
I think this is bang on.

It's over simplistic, but basically we are heading back to the 1970s. High tax, folk emigrating for jobs/ better life/ avoiding tax, strikes, civil unrest, power cuts, political shenanigans, three day week (folk want four days now), oil wars .....
 
Dave Bishop said:
Spaghetti Bolognaise main - £17.. tasted OK but something which you could make at home to similar standard.
Click to expand...

Yeah pretty much, you could make a lot of Bolognese for £17. I eat just to stay alive and wouldn't have anything that fancy or large guts.

I live in the vicinity of every take away going and don't touch them either because they're all overpriced for what it is.

A small kebab would cost you £12 or something stupid and you could sink a boat with the portion.
 
DRD said:
I think this is bang on.

It's over simplistic, but basically we are heading back to the 1970s. High tax, folk emigrating for jobs/ better life/ avoiding tax, strikes, civil unrest, power cuts, political shenanigans, three day week (folk want four days now), oil wars .....
Click to expand...
Hopefully we get punk back too!
 
I live waaaaaaay up north, proper north, not Manchester, etc. Our city centre is virtually filled by cafes, bars and restaurants. Shops are rapidly dying out.

But with so much choice, they really do seem to be vying for your business, which can only be good.

Taking out the artisan/Michelin places, it's about £7 or £8 for a starter and £15 to £20 for mains.

As someone who loves to eat out, I'd say we have never had it so good.
 
Just seen the pub I’m going to see a band at in Camden on Friday are now charging £8.95 a pint and £16.95 for a non branded double.

Looks like I’m going to stay dry. Guessing a soft drink is still going to break the bank.
 
johnwhitfield said:
Just seen the pub I’m going to see a band at in Camden on Friday are now charging £8.95 a pint and £16.95 for a non branded double.

Looks like I’m going to stay dry. Guessing a soft drink is still going to break the bank.
Click to expand...
I was out in Camden on Thursday. We went to Dingwalls next to the lock and the barman admitted he was charging us more as he knew we were tourists 😆.
We promptly departed.
 
Food aside I find some drink prices laughable, Bars that charge £5 for a single Vodka and coke then a £10 for a double, saw this at Pinfest. Our locals are more like £3.50 - £4.50.
 
The main 02 somehow manages to charge £9 for a pint, serve it in a terrible plastic cup that splinters and somehow make it taste like utter **** all at the same time.
 
Nutty said:
Our locals are more like £3.50 - £4.50.
Click to expand...
What for, Cider? Get a nice premium beer for £6.60 where I'm going. Same was said about restaurants, all depends on the area, I lived in Liverpool for a long stretch of 3 months and was £1 a pint up there and illegal live streaming football, lol.
 
neil1637 said:
I live waaaaaaay up north, proper north, not Manchester, etc. Our city centre is virtually filled by cafes, bars and restaurants. Shops are rapidly dying out.
Click to expand...

It's like that everywhere, you either get a new place to eat or a new barber now. No exaggeration but there are 6 barbers + no idea how many hairdressers in a 20 metre radius where I am, I fail to see how they all keep going on a small patch.
 
For the purpose of this post I’m referring to Carling Black Label.
I was watching a Craft Beer YouTube channel and he was saying that there is a certain % tolerance breweries are aloud to brew to and still market it at X%. So it could say 3.5% yet in reality be 2.5 or 4.5%. If it strays out of that tolerance they are not allowed to call it Carling. So they brewed Carling down to a lower % and called it Carling. The old recipe which was stronger was rebranded as Madri.
So Madri is original recipe Carling brewed in Burton on Trent 😆.
 
dave said:
It's like that everywhere, you either get a new place to eat or a new barber now. No exaggeration but there are 6 barbers + no idea how many hairdressers in a 20 metre radius where I am, I fail to see how they all keep going on a small patch.
Click to expand...
All businesses that can take cash. Useful if you have lots of cash stashed under the mattress and need to get it into the bank.
 
Spandangler said:
For the purpose of this post I’m referring to Carling Black Label.
I was watching a Craft Beer YouTube channel and he was saying that there is a certain % tolerance breweries are aloud to brew to and still market it at X%. So it could say 3.5% yet in reality be 2.5 or 4.5%. If it strays out of that tolerance they are not allowed to call it Carling. So they brewed Carling down to a lower % and called it Carling. The old recipe which was stronger was rebranded as Madri.
So Madri is original recipe Carling brewed in Burton on Trent 😆.
Click to expand...
And that’s why Madri is crap😂
Is that the guy from Barry who does the craft ale channel? Enjoy watching him getting 9issed in the morning😁

I buy pub kegs and noticed some dropping in strength on the label, scandalous.

Asiapinball said:
All businesses that can take cash. Useful if you have lots of cash stashed under the mattress and need to get it into the bank.
Click to expand...
And the taxman will not care because they will be paying tax on their laundered money even though it’s so obvious.
So many of those barbers around all of a sudden everywhere it’s unreal, good luck to them.
 
M4carp said:
And that’s why Madri is crap😂
Is that the guy from Barry who does the craft ale channel? Enjoy watching him getting 9issed in the morning😁

I buy pub kegs and noticed some dropping in strength on the label, scandalous.


And the taxman will not care because they will be paying tax on their laundered money even though it’s so obvious.
So many of those barbers around all of a sudden everywhere it’s unreal, good luck to them.
Click to expand...

🤣 Yeah that’s him mate. I enjoy watching him. He convinces me whatever he says
 
M4carp said:
And the taxman will not care because they will be paying tax on their laundered money even though it’s so obvious.
So many of those barbers around all of a sudden everywhere it’s unreal, good luck to them.
Click to expand...
Yeah, ofc something going on, they can't all afford to pop up. I went through a small rural village the other week and they had one too.
 
The fundamental root cause is residential property price increase. It affects everything in business. Staff need higher wages to pay for higher rent and mortgages and the business has to take on that increase. Nearly every other cost in doing business such as the logistics chain is affected by the same thing - staff wages up, warehousing costs up. The gap between what people are prepared to pay for a night out in town and the cost that it can be provided for is widening due to all these multiplications.

Commercial property is pegged to land prices, if the land value goes up then the commercial rent goes up too. If the land is worth more as residential then the commercial property gets knocked down and luxury flats or student accomodation gets built in its place, maybe with some swa-nky new ground level commercial unit space which will be multiple times the previous locations rental fee. That all reduces opportunities to set up a decent operation.

Another hilarious cost is the business rates, I really don't know what the VOA are on. It's like they base figures on the good old high footfall days but a lot of town centers are absolutely desolate places now, because the rates are helping drive out businesses. The count of people on the street is just completely ignored, the rates just go up according to perceived land value according to location.

People might point out that large chains are doing well, ever expanding, pulling in some numbers but are they actually in profit? A lot of them aren't, some are barely covering costs or making a loss. They either have more profitable locations covering the weaker ones, or venture capital money is being sunk into the operation. It's a different business model for them, usually vested in being pumped up to such a size that they'll make more money being sold off to another mug pension firm or VC.

At least we can all still pop abroard on budget flights where the cost of food and alchohol seems to be perpetually cheaper.
 
Spandangler said:
🤣 Yeah that’s him mate. I enjoy watching him. He convinces me whatever he says
Click to expand...
I watched one the other day where he was not up to date with what’s going on in the world because he doesn’t watch tv and just streams because he decides what he watches etc
I’m pretty sure he said that because he hasn’t got a tv licence😂 (plenty of people this end of Wales just don’t buy one as well🤣)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom