The plate’s gotten pricey

This restaurant review started with a budget of Rs 2,500 for a meal for two four years ago. It makes you laugh if you think about it now because within about a year, the budget had to be re-adjusted. A decent meal for two people with a drink each can cost you about Rs 2,000 per head these days, assuming you want a little more than idli-dosa or khichdi.

I took a friend and her young daughter out for lunch the other day at a pleasant Italian eaterie in Bandra. We ordered one pizza, one pasta, one risotto and two desserts — no alcohol, no drinks of any kind as it happened and the bill came to about Rs 2,000. If we had
ordered starters and a main course each, you could add Rs 1,000 to the bill. A couple of drinks and, you have it, a ticket to Delhi before the airlines went nuts.

The reason for going on and on about pricing in this column really comes from a sense of amazement that people still eat out so much and the apparently easy way in which we adjust to inflation. You might complain to your local bhajiwallah about the price of onions but you would still eat a lettuce and feta cheese salad for Rs 430 without batting an eyelid. I bought 250 gm of delicious, peppery rocket leaves the other day — it cost me the grand sum of Rs 19 and I managed to make three days worth of
decent salad portions out of that (superb with roasted zucchini and bell peppers and a dash of olive oil and lime juice).

If you consider that western ingredients might have to be imported and therefore cost a little more, it’s worth looking at Indian food too. A plate of chicken tikka at a decent, well-decorated eaterie might well be priced at about Rs 280 — that’s for six to eight pieces. A kg of chicken costs about Rs 150 to 170. You do the math. Is it surprising that restaurants charge so much or that people are willing to pay that much for a well-cooked, well-presented meal at a well decorated restaurant with good service?

Obviously, the eating out experience has to do with a lot more than mere pricing. But at the moment, the restaurant seems a bit like the real estate industry — enormous pie-in-the sky prices, where you feel that soon, something’s got to give.

But I suppose it’s the season to be jolly and to count neither the calories nor the small change. Here’s to a wonderful holiday season with plenty of good cheer and looking to the promise of 2011!