Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
This is a good club to visit if you are ever in Sydney. The food is not cheap but it has a good harbour view. It is casual, you order and pay at the counter, get a number and the food is brought to you. Tax is included in the price and no tipping required.
Our usual nice meal out is the 6 or 8 oz Renegade steak at Longhorn, using a $5 off coupon, from the news paper, and paying with a $50 gift card that was purchased with charge card points. We drink water. We'll leave a cash tip which enables us to go twice with the gift card.
We go out for breakfast or lunch once or twice a week and spend $25 to $35 with tip. But, I more often than not bring half of mine home to eat the next day. I work from home so enjoy getting to go out for a meal. The 1 thing that does bother me is the high price some places charge for drinks. $2.69 is highway robbery for a glass of iced tea, even more so when a glass of coke is $2.79. They do provide free refills, but still...
For nights we just don't feel like cooking, we've got a couple of go to places that have decent prices.
High end, special occasions, we have a very short list of places and spend $125 to $200 for the 2 of us, tip and bottle of decent wine included, but that only happens 1 to 3 times a year. A lot of times, we'll get our favorite foods and have at home. Like for my birthday, my favorite meal is stone crab claws, a Cesar salad and a fantastic dessert. So, hubs picks up 3 or so pounds of stone crab claws at a place that has their own boats, $45 to $60 depending on market, we make our salad, and I make my birthday dessert from a list of favs. So, at most, we'll spend $75 for both of us, which would have been the cost of 1 meal (if not more) for that amount of stone crabs.
Hubs got us an ounce of black truffles and a couple of small jars of osetra caviar for Christmas 1 year at a place that supplies mega yachts, think he spent about $160. We had 4, maybe 5 meals with truffles, plus a couple of meals that included caviar, and I had truffle ends leftover that I used to make truffle butter that got put on steaks or risotto for several meals. We might have gotten 1 meal at a restaurant for $160 that included truffles and caviar.
Yesterday, we went to a restaurant supply place because hubs wants to make some sausage (yes, prices on meat are that good to warrant a special trip) and he wanted to see what seafood they had. Wild caught, dry pack diver scallops for $12.60 a pound. I made 2 preps, a crudo and seared on a simple risotto finished with lemon juice and zest. Pics are in dinner thread. While dinner wasn't as prettily plated as it would have been in a high end place, ask me if I cared while I was eating those sweet tender scallops! Best of all, name a restaurant where you could get a meal like that for 2 for under $20 (factoring in costs of additional ingredients).
I prefer a casual sit down place when eating out. Don't care for fast food or buffets.
$10-13 is in my comfort range for a plate for dinner. It better be exceptional if I am paying more than that. Exception-seafood or steak. I usually take my mom out for late lunch or early dinner and between the both of us I pay about $30-35 once a month before the tip.
The thing that bothers me is the excessive mark-up on drinks at restaurants now, a bit too vicious in my opinion. $3-4 for soda and watered down iced tea? AT IHOP for basic black coffee its Starbucks prices, NO!!! I can see $2 for a small cup of coffee or $2-2.50 for soda. Beyond that you are losing me.
I may be drinking even more water than I do, totally unacceptable to me. Usually when I eat out its the only time I drink a soda.
Last edited by FierceKaia; 12-17-2018 at 03:28 AM..
Reason: adding info
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
