> Graham Motzing wrote:
> -------------------------------------------------------
> > Seth B wrote:
>
> > -------------------------------------------------------
>
> > I’m a better trained chef than most
>
> > local restaurants have.
>
> You guys that live in bigger cities think this is a joke but seriously,
> in my 60k population small city, there are like 6 good restaurants, I
> will only eat at about 4 of them. The other 100 are shitty bar food,
> frozen sam's club hamberders cooked within an inch of their life. One
> place I went to actually took a frozen Sam's club Patty and put it in a
> convection oven of all things.
>
> Even the ethnic restaurants, who I'm sure have Great Cooks working in
> the back, cook shitty water down flavorless food for the bland taste
> buds of people that live here. If you can take a bunch of nasty kempcump
> ass enchilada sauce out of a can and slap it on some bag tortillas with
> wet chicken inside, and people will pay $15 a plate for it, why bother
> actually making good food?
>
> It's a pretty sad situation, if I want to take a break and actually
> dineout, I'm eating overpriced mediocre food. The best food we eat on a
> regular basis comes out of my kitchen but it's a lot of work when
> sometimes you just want to chill on a Saturday night.
^^This right here. My town is population 2,300. There’s not a “good” restaurant here. There’s a decent pizza joint that makes everything from scratch. There’s another pizza joint/brewery that sucks. A Mexican place. A greasy burger joint. That’s it. The closest City to me, Walla Walla, is 32,000 folks. It’s 45 minutes away. We actually ate there last night, because we had some shopping to do. We went to a wing restaurant; I love me some hot wings! I ordered the 9 piece bone-in wings with 3 sauces for $20. No sides included. I got one sauce in the medium category, one in the hot, and one in the super hot. My wife ordered the prime rib French dip with fries. $17 +$1 for sautéed mushrooms on it. The food runner brought our food exactly 3 minutes after we ordered it. I thought it was way too fast. She asked who had the chicken tenders, which we replied “Neither”. Oops! She says, and says she’ll fix it but leaves the French dip & fries for us. The fries were cold. How can we get our food in 3 minutes with it half wrong and cold fries? We sent the sandwich & fries back and requested hot food. Waiter seemed perturbed, but brought our proper meals hot and fresh 15 minutes later. The wings hat no “heat” at all- everything was mild. I like shit HOT! Jalapeños are mild. The French dip was delicious, but had no mushrooms. So, all said and done we spent over $75 for two beers and two meals, and it was mediocre at best. There’s a handful of decent places in Walla, and a couple really good, really expensive ones. I don’t do fancy-schmancy dining. I like real food done right. That’s hard to find. Everything is bland and toned down for tepid palates. Food should be exciting! Flavors should be developed and robust. This takes time. Time is expensive. I like slow food. I was trained in high end restaurants in West Palm Beach, FL. They’re not shy of flavor in Florida. So many food cultures competing for diner’s dollars.