Modern Food?

[Jayco-noslide]

We know we're getting old and times are changing but we can't seem to get really quality food at restaurants. Time after time we leave a restaurant with no good reason to return. Usually the food is "just OK" or worse. We usually like our own home cooked food just fine so it's not that we are losing our taste. Some of my theories are: Many of the young have not grown up with quality food so they set the bar low. Local small town cafes are disappearing. The young seem to want to cover everything with sauces, strong spices, multiple items, etc. so it covers poor meat. They are avoiding traditionals like roast beef, baked ham, etc. They don't cook their own quality food at home.Example: yesterday a "family restaurant". Catfish-bland no flavor, baked potato not thouroghly done and tasteless non-butter spread, funny tasting rolls. The cost is high but hasn't it always been. We do enjoy Steak n Shake, Texas Roadhouse, and the Iowa Machine Shed. Expensive places are sometimes better but some of the best past ones were reasonable.

[Edd505]

We are all in fully contained RV's, what happened to home cooking? I won't say we don't eat our but Wendy's, Burger King, etc all have salads for times we are not near the RV at meal times. Wife is a great cook and for what a single meal costs at the "upper end restaurants" we can eat for days with fresh home cooked food.

[jplante4]

Thunder Mountain wrote:
Cowboy Café - It had a huge breakfast plate that the two of us split. We usually don't do breakfast out, but this was wonderful. Finished it off with some pie and ice cream which we split as well.

Pie and ice cream for breakfast - my kind of campers.

[JasseJackson]

I think modern Food now - It's a Vegan Food...
And often it's expensive food((
I'm not a vegan, but sometimes I make at home Vegan Pasta
Cheap and tasty recipe!

[Thunder_Mountai]

JAC1982 wrote:

Thunder Mountain wrote:
Unless you pay high dollars for a meal, everything just comes off the same Sysco truck everywhere you go. Even at high end restaurants much of the food comes from the same purveyors. It is just the way the chefs prepare it. We don't eat out much because of this. We have few favorites. None of them are chains. Many are mom and pop Mexican/Southwestern. One of our favorite places is Southern Vittles in Lake City Colorado. Home style comfort food. This summer the local campground owner told us about a place in Dubois, WY that was over the top including homemade pies.

Tell me about this spot in Dubois 🙂

Cowboy Café - It had a huge breakfast plate that the two of us split. We usually don't do breakfast out, but this was wonderful. Finished it off with some pie and ice cream which we split as well.

[bpounds]

Point was, if it was as bad as y'all let on, you'd stop eatin it.

I love eating out, and I definitely know my way around the stove.

[Jayco-noslide]

Being fat is more likely due to poor food in large quantities than to too much good quality food.

[Trekkar]

fj12ryder wrote:

Deb and Ed M wrote:

fj12ryder wrote:

rk911 wrote:
to us eating is a necessity, not an experience. our expectations are adjusted accordingly. the “fanciest” place we go to is Olive Garden.

Good food is a joy, and I mourn for your loss.

Good food IS a joy - but some of us live where it simply doesn't exist without a long drive to a big city. Our Mom-and-Pop restaurants want to throw everything in a deep fryer because it's fast and easy. Bleagh. I can eat "healthier" at McDonalds.

This is very true. We have some good restaurants to choose from, but none in town closest to where we live. And lots of franchises in Kansas City, but still lots of good locally owned dining establishments that are worth driving to.

One of the best times we had was driving down the PCH and sampling all the varieties of clam chowder available in all the little restaurants. Hard to believe such a simple dish can have so many taste variations. All pretty good, and some just plain outstanding. Yum yum. Kind of like driving around down in Louisiana and sampling all the types of gumbo.

I agree. I find cooking our own food with natural ingredients to be a joy. With the availability of thousands of different recipes on the 'Net, you could literally never have a repeat meal. That said, one of the perks of travel on the Blue Highways is being able to find good, local restaurants in the smaller communities. They are still out there. Take a look at how many restaurant chains have gone under because they are all the same.

[wa8yxm]

Jayco Noslide wrote:
We usually like our own home cooked food just fine so it's not that we are losing our taste. Some of my theories are: Many of the young have not grown up with quality food so they set the bar low.

Likely some truth to your theory.. I still find some decent family type places. but they are getting harder to find as Low-quality and/or high priced chains take over. One trick is to look at the parking lot. Generally if it's empty at meal time. It should remain so. If it's packed.. May be better food.

I have had occasion to park in the grocery store lot across the street it was that packed... Was good too.

But mostly.. Well long long time ago.. I learned my way around a kitchen.

[Chum_lee]

bpounds wrote:
If the food is so poor, how do we explain our fat asses?

A diet consisting of too much sugar, high fructose corn syrup, highly refined carbohydrates (flour: wheat, corn, rice, oat, or bran, it doesn't matter) too much unsaturated fats, and not enough dietary fiber.

Google/Youtube search: "Dr. Robert Lustig" its all you need to know about modern food. Have a nice heart attack/stroke, or amputation due to Type II diabetes.

Or if you prefer to hear it from a pretty woman with a nice accent: "Dr. Zoe Harcombe"

"Human beings are the only animals on the planet smart enough to create our own food, and dumb enough to eat it."

Chum lee

[fj12ryder]

Deb and Ed M wrote:

fj12ryder wrote:

rk911 wrote:
to us eating is a necessity, not an experience. our expectations are adjusted accordingly. the “fanciest” place we go to is Olive Garden.

Good food is a joy, and I mourn for your loss.

Good food IS a joy - but some of us live where it simply doesn't exist without a long drive to a big city. Our Mom-and-Pop restaurants want to throw everything in a deep fryer because it's fast and easy. Bleagh. I can eat "healthier" at McDonalds.

This is very true. We have some good restaurants to choose from, but none in town closest to where we live. And lots of franchises in Kansas City, but still lots of good locally owned dining establishments that are worth driving to.

One of the best times we had was driving down the PCH and sampling all the varieties of clam chowder available in all the little restaurants. Hard to believe such a simple dish can have so many taste variations. All pretty good, and some just plain outstanding. Yum yum. Kind of like driving around down in Louisiana and sampling all the types of gumbo.

[Deb_and_Ed_M]

fj12ryder wrote:

rk911 wrote:
to us eating is a necessity, not an experience. our expectations are adjusted accordingly. the “fanciest” place we go to is Olive Garden.

Good food is a joy, and I mourn for your loss.

Good food IS a joy - but some of us live where it simply doesn't exist without a long drive to a big city. Our Mom-and-Pop restaurants want to throw everything in a deep fryer because it's fast and easy. Bleagh. I can eat "healthier" at McDonalds.

[time2roll]

bpounds wrote:
If the food is so poor, how do we explain our fat asses?

I think most of you just resent having to pay for restaurants.

Most plates serve 3x what you need. We feast virtually every day.

[ppine]

Portion control.
We took the fat out of food and added sugar and corn syrup to make it palatable. That is when Americans got really fat.
Most people do not move nearly enough.
Restaurant food uses fat for flavor. Often too much fat and plenty of sauces.

[JaxDad]

bpounds wrote:
If the food is so poor, how do we explain our fat asses?

Portion control ....... or the lack thereof.

I’m constantly amazed at how much food restaurants serve / people actually eat. I was a popular buffett restaurant very recently and 2 young men came in and were seated at a booth near me. These were big boys, the 2 of them filled a 4 person booth.

In the time it took me to eat a side plate of salad, a modest plate of entree items and a couple of cups of coffee they each ate 3 full (I mean full to overflowing) dinner plates of food and were moving on to the sweets.

Oh, but they washed it all down with diet sodas!

Next time you pick up a package of prepared food look at the nutritional info panel. It’s shocking how little a “serving” ought to be.

Compared to the overhead costs, the cost of the food in a restaurant is very minor, so over-sized portions is a cheap way to keep the customers coming back.