Your Eating and Drinking Out Experiences Suck Because Most Restaurants Are Terrible

It’s time to take a stand

When it comes to eating and drinking out, customers rarely win these days.

Perhaps people visit you and despite having hundreds — or even thousands — of restaurants in your vicinity, you struggle to know where to take them.

Perhaps you live in a reputed “foodie paradise” yet every time you go out, you can’t for the life of you figure out why it’s got that reputation.

Perhaps you hear about a hot new restaurant but the experience leaves you cold.

Here’s the thing. It’s not you. It’s them.

Unfortunately — and I say this with all the love in the world thanks to 11 years in the hospitality trade — finding a place for dinner or drinks that is actually good is often close to impossible.

But thanks to a heady mix of don’t-give-a-sh*t owners, rising costs, and lowering of margins, you’re the one who has to put up with expensive dinners, mediocre drinks, and meh service.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

It shouldn’t.

It’s time to take a stand.

How many decent restaurants are in your area compared to the number of establishments?

Here in Porto, we have over 2000 restaurants but I would struggle to name you 25 that are worth visiting.

That’s a success percentage of 1.2%.

If I’m being really honest, there are only a handful I think are doing marvelous things — things that could be considered world-class.

That’s not a lot in a city of 1.3 million people.

I’m not throwing shade on Porto here. This is my home, I love it, and for a small city, it’s doing better than most.

This is a problem the world over.

London? Barcelona? Rome? Considering how many restaurants are in these cities, there should be so many more places filling the Michelin or Zagat guide, food blogs, and people’s personal recommendation lists. But there aren’t.

I’m not just talking about fancy places either. Quality can be found at all levels, from the €2 pork sandwich I often eat at a local tavern here in Portugal, to a €200 a head Michelin-starred joint in San Sebastián.

Even in a place that is known as a foodie heaven — like where I used to live in Logroño in northern Spain — the percentage of good vs. mediocre seldom seems to rise above 4% or 5%.

This isn’t right. The percentages are too low.

Thanks to my job in wine and food, I spend a lot of time scoping out places, and time and again I come up against the same problems. Bad food quality, couldn’t-care-less ownership and cynical marketing, not to mention the rise of the fake fancy restaurant I wrote about a few months back.

Whenever I end up in a place like this, I die a little inside but it happens more often than I’d like.

Call me naïve but I want the percentage of good quality (at all price points) establishments to be closer to 100%. I want to see care and attention return to hospitality. I want to see owners that give a sh*t.

But they don’t. And that’s the biggest problem of them all.

Most restaurant owners are squeezed but that’s not their biggest problem

It’s no secret that owning a bar or restaurant is incredibly difficult.

For a start, rents are high. A very good London restaurant — owned by a friend of mine — shuttered a few years back thanks to a 100% increase in rent.

It’s not the only example.

And it’s not just the rent. Finding good staff is hard thanks to the societal-based misnomer that working in hospitality isn’t a worthy career.

Customers have less money to spend on going out which means restaurants have to keep prices as low as they can. Their margins are squeezed tighter than me in my pre-pandemic jeans.

We live in a money-hungry economy and bars and restaurants are no less immune to the effects of that than anything else. Prices rise, margins are lowered, and the first thing to go by the wayside is quality.

That could be the quality of the food and drinks, the staff, the service, the atmosphere — it’s all up for being chucked out with the three-day-old fish.

But that’s not the only reason your eating experiences suck right now. There’s also the bonus that many owners that don’t give a sh*t.

Anyone who has read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential will know Bourdain’s scathing opinions on don’t-give-a-sh*t owners. That they open a joint for all the wrong reasons like kudos or because they think they’ll make a quick buck.

25 years later, little has changed.

If you’ve been out to a “hot” new joint anytime in the last few years, you’ll probably know what I mean. Expensive mediocre food, expensive mediocre drinks, meh-to-bad service — I’ve seen it all. And so much of it comes from the top. If the owner is only in the game to try and make money or look fancy in front of their friends, the joint is almost guaranteed to be a bust.

The money lining their wallets has to come from somewhere.

Many owners believe that restaurant and bar ownership sits in the “it’s just business” category of life when anyone who has ever worked in hospitality knows that it’s never just a business.

To succeed in this world — to make your restaurant or bar a success — you’ve got to care. A lot.

Not enough people do.

When I first opened my wine bar, I got to know the local hospitality scene and it was shocking how little most bar and restaurant owners cared. They wanted bums on seats and to work with the highest margins for the lowest quality they thought they could get away with.

This wasn’t hard. People are gaslit by these don’t-give-a-sh*t establishments with decent PR into believing they’re good. And if clients have little frame of reference, they don’t know what they’re missing.

It’s a travesty.

What was interesting however is that the quality establishments in my town were always full. They were getting good online reviews. They cared about quality, they didn’t rip off their customers and they trained their staff well. They were all the busier for it.

Because customers can sniff out quality once they get a taste for it.

Quality sells. But too few establishment owners know or care about that.

And you’re the one suffering for it.

Maybe I’m naïve but I keep the faith

I keep the faith that going out is going to improve. I keep the faith that quality will prevail.

I mean, it’s not like the old way is working. 80% of restaurants shutter in the first five years. Something has got to give.

And don’t-give-a-sh*t owners should be the first out the door.

After all, the places I see that make it are the ones that care. The owner-operated joints. The places that create a special based on seasonality or what looks good at the market — not what they picked up at their local bargain basement wholesalers.

Yes, we live in a world filled with greedy landlords and tight margins. But I see enough hospitality folk making their place work — despite these challenges — to believe it can be done.

I managed it. Friends of mine manage it and many of them aren’t just surviving, they’re thriving.

Their attitude and dedication to the cause is a big reason why.

Maybe I’m naïve to believe that every restaurant and bar should focus on quality. But I’m an optimistic sort, so I keep the faith. You should too.

OK, most restaurants and bars are terrible, but you can forget about frequenting them. Instead, visit the good places. Seek out quality on whatever level you’re comfortable with.

Purchase the world you wish to inhabit and you’ll directly contribute to an uptick in the quality establishment percentage of your town.

Little by little, it can be done. I’ve seen it happen.

Take a stand. Eat well. And I’ll see you there.

Listen up, Medium readers, I’ve launched a remote wine consulting service called SommAnywhere. Tell me what you like to drink and where you live, I’ll send you a list of the best places local-to-you and online stores and what you should buy from each of them. You’ll also get my little black book of wineries. Book the service here.