Does your food need a fancy name?

[aigheadish]

Digging this thread up from the past because I searched for Eggs Benedict. 

I've, a few times, gone out for a nice meal and I like to do it, but most of the time I find it unworthy of the cost. Dayton, it seems, has decent food but I haven't found anything that was like a meal I ate on my first marriage's honeymoon, at St. John in the Virgin Islands. It was the first time I'd been to a legit fancy restaurant that overlooked the bay and several other islands. I think we spent in the neighborhood of 200-250 bucks and this would have been in 2004, I think. I don't recall even what I ate I just remember it being unlike any food I'd previously eaten with flavors and textures I didn't know could go with food. 

I like unfancy food too. I consider myself a decent cook but I get a little frustrated when going to a nice place to find that I can make something better than they can. My wife and I went out a few weeks ago to one of the higher end joints in Dayton and I got a $37 steak. Unfortunately for my wallet a week or two earlier I'd made 4 steaks that were better that I'd bought from the store for like 24 bucks. 

When my grandma used to get mad at my grandpa for not taking her out to eat he'd say something along the lines of "why would we go out when you cook better than anything we can get at a restaurant?" I think of that often. 

I still think it's a treat to go to a fancy place but I still long for that initial joint on St. John. Even the highest end places in Dayton don't seem to come close to matching it. 

[Raider Bill]

We eat out twice a week. Pizza shop one night and a seafood place the other.
Never get a steak out as I'm always disappointed.
It's very rare I fund a steak that beats what I cook for 1/4 the price.

[Machinebuilder]

I'm more of a simple food person.

I have been fortunate enough to eat at some extremely good restaurants, and some quite expensive that weren't that good.

The best steak I've ever had was at Smith and Wolenskys in Chicago, dry aged prime ribeye, rare.

IMHO the best places to find are the small hole in the wall mom and pop place on a back road with a full parking lot. or a seafood shack on the fishing dock.

one of my favorite sayings is "slow food is good food"

[gspren]

Some of our favorite restaurants have a sign out with the towns name and Diner after it.

[sawguy21]

We found some great mom and pop places on the roads less traveled, they depended on the locals repeat business for survival. If it had a full parking lot chances were good. I like to experiment with new dishes although if they tried to impress me with a fancy name I tended to pass.

[Ianab]

We eat a pretty wide variety of dishes, I cook most of them.  My observation is that a lot of "fancy" dishes are basically "Peasant food" from somewhere else. Means it doesn't actually need exotic ingredients and exacting preparation, although you might have to modify things a bit for local ingredients. Getting a handle on the different spices (and what the family likes) helps, you can skim a recipe and get an idea of what it's going to taste like. 

Making a beef stew is an example, it's a basic dish most Western folks would recognise. But it's no easier or cheaper to make than stroganoff / chilli / bolognese or even a basic curry recipe. Somewhere in the world those are the equivalent of beef stew, and might get served with potato / rice / pasta / noodles, which are all simple and cheap.  

Restaurant will of course name them in the foreign language to make them seem fancy.  ;)

[Texas Ranger]

I like the fancy named stuff, French Toast, spaghetti, shrimp an grits, eggs benedict, steak an eggs, etc. boudin, deer meat (some folks put a fancy name on it, venison).  In short, food is food, put any name on it, just make the food recognizable.  8)

[WV Sawmiller]

   This thread reminds me of a vacation we took in February 2008 from Norway to Cameroon in West Africa and had to lay over one night in Paris. We went to a nice French restaurant and I was hungry and ordered the biggest steak on the menu. It was probably 3-4 ounces, tough as shoe leather and pretty tasteless. The waiter seemed highly offended when I asked for steak sauce (I think he went back in the kitchen and actually cried on the cook's shoulder) and they finally found a bottle of watery catsup for my fries - excuse me - my Pomme Frites. The plate looked more like a painting to hang in a gallery with all the fancy colorful sauces connecting the tiny dollop of something (I'm still not sure what) in each corner of the plate. When we were done eating I think we ordered a pizza to take back to our room.

On the contrary about a week later I had the best fish meal (Fresh caught Tilapia with heads on, scaled, gutted, rubbed with local made peanut oil and a local Maggi seasoning) I have ever eaten to this day. It was cooked outside on the street in a remote Cameroonian village over a charcoal fire on an upturned car wheel with a heavy piece of concrete reinforcement wire for a grill and when cooked the lady handed it to me on a piece of torn off used cement sack. It cost between 25 and 40 cents and I went back and ordered 2-3 more as well as several for my wife and guide. My wife had me buy her a couple of fresh tomatoes from a nearby vender that we wiped the dust off before eating and washed it all down with a lukewarm 2 liter Coke.

Many years later we vacationed in Ethiopia with my wife and our daughter. I was happy with Tibbis - braised meat with spices and ate it nearly every meal, but the ladies wanted other dishes. The food was so poor at every meal they got to where they each routinely ordered 2 complete separate meals in hopes one would be edible. Fortunately the cost of such meals was cheap.

[sawguy21]

A friend and I went to an upscale French restaurant, according to those in the know it was THE best French cuisine, but like you we were sorely disappointed in the small portions and it wasn't cheap. Apparently they eat four or five small meals instead of our normal three.

[beenthere]

Years back I was a guest in a French family's Paris home for dinner. It was a 6 course meal that lasted about 4 hours. Was told that it was a daily thing but just one meal a day. Used to remember each course, not anymore. A different wine with each course, complete change of tableware, and done in a particular order. Recall the salad course was to "clear the palate". Everything served from the cheese to the different foods was excellent.

[Texas Ranger]

Spent some time in France, and on occasions all I can say is the French do not cook for GI's.  Usually good, but small, and on occasions it was good to not be identifiable.   But wine, oh yeah.

[gspren]

I'm planning a fancy gourmet meal and need some advice, what is the proper wine to serve with baked possum?

[newoodguy78]

Dandelion or Boone's Farm

[Texas Ranger]

Mad Dog

[WV Sawmiller]

Ripple.

[Raider Bill]

Champipple

[Andries]

Poutine and Pino Grigio. 😋

[beenthere]

Muscatel

[WDH]

Elderberry.

[sawguy21]

@beenthere If you are washing possum down with muscatel I'll pass on both! My parents were not wine connoisseurs, they found it palatable and cheap so that's what they bought. It might be good with Screwit, a local dry red that is really quite nice.

[Don P]

A fine platter of bandicoot might be accompanied by a sampling of Miss Annabelle's of the Verdant Springs.
Before, during, and after  :D

[kantuckid]

We eat out twice a week. Pizza shop one night and a seafood place the other.
Never get a steak out as I'm always disappointed.
It's very rare I fund a steak that beats what I cook for 1/4 the price.

My few steaks are markdown Walmart meat. If I got there earlier in the a.m. I'd buy it more often. Yesterday I scored two NY Strips and two Angus sirloin tenderloins and a big pkg of ground sirloin. Not that we eat much steak, seriously.
We might eat out twice a month if you count pizza carry outs.
Fancy food names- does Saturdays supper of Grandpa Bishop pole beans & a BLT count? I had a nice Dester heirloom mater on my sandwich (also a banana pepper, not lettuce) and in my bowl of green beans I had what's called a "dogs mess " here bouts. It's beans cooked down with pork meat and maters & onions and cukes piled on it. 

[K-Guy]

My wife made a new dish this weekend, basically it is mac'n cheese with cooked hamburger and a few addons. It turned out well so I decided it should have fancy name.

I call it " Glop" patent pending :D

[Texas Ranger]

Our local grocery stores have the out of date bins my wife and I call "used meat".  She came in with two small fillets date expire that day, Walmart, best most tender steak we have had in years.  Over the years have used a lot of used meat. 8)

[Raider Bill]

We call that "green" meat cause it sometimes has a green tint if you hit it right in the light.
I prefer to call it aged. I get the roasts and big cuts to grind up for burger meat recipes.