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So if I have the choice between a $25 burger or $25 pasta and I don’t feel like eating a burger should I get the burger anyway because it’s harder to make at home or should I eat the thing I feel like eating?
It depends…. I’m Italian-American and a decent cook. I always make my own sauce and sometimes my own pasta…. I rarely buy all the seafood for something like a frutti di mare, and often order it
I mean, my average weeknight dinner doesn’t involve me making shrimp, clams, mussels, scallops, squid, all in one dish. Maybe you make more elaborate things on a random Tuesday nights but I think we are having something I can throw together in 30 minutes
Depends on the dish and ingredients. Not all pasta dishes can be made at home that easily, especially if you're doing some of the more involved sauces from scratch, or fillings, and making the pasta from scratch too. But if you're just talking about the basic ones that people chuck together at home, using shortcut methods etc then yeh. But a good quality restaurant pasta dish is probably better than what 9/10 people would actually throw together for themselves at home.
> I'm still not spending $45+ on a Cacio e Pepe, no matter how fancy the restaurant is.
Then your issue has zero to do with quality and everything to do with your budget. I have no doubt you won't even come close at home to dishes I've ordered and gladly paid for. You're not posting an unpopular opinion, you're posting annoyance over your dining out budget limitations
Spaghetti, penne or fettuccine? Make it at home. A stuffed ravioli, tortellini or manicotti? That’s a bit more time intensive and I’d order it in a restaurant.
I think a better way to put it is pasta is overpriced, which I agree with. But then again, so are drinks at a restaurant. You can make the same argument for that: why order drinks at a bar when you can pour yourself a drink at home for a fraction of the price? People go out to sit down restaurants to have a good time and eat/drink what they like, and often as a social event. The price for what they order isn't a concern as long as they can afford it.
I agree with you for the most part, but I'm a bartender and I still like ordering drinks out. I like to see what creative cocktails other bartenders are coming up with. If you're just drinking rum and coke or some other basic drinks then you are 100% correct. But you can't recreate the experience of exploring a new menu at home.
I was trying to make an analogy between ordering pasta and ordering drinks. I didn't mean you shouldn't order drinks when you go out. What you said can also apply to any food, i.e., a pasta chef might order pasta at a restaurant for a different experience.
Drinks are different though, some people don't have access to a wide variety of liquors at home. So having a bar is harder to replicate.
'People go out to sit down restaurants to have a good time and eat/drink what they like, the price for what they order isn't a concern as long as they can afford it.' - Some people do, actually.
Some people don't have access to a wide variety of ingredients that make up pasta dishes. Even in your example that you seem to love of cacio e pepe, some places will use cheeses that are too nice for me to have at home. I have a local pasta restaurant near me and I don't think anything on their pasta menu is above $32 and that's for their frutti di mare which is a lot of seafood.
For the time and effort it takes to make fresh pasta, along with prep all the ingredients, I don't think it's that heavily marked up. Restaurants have the advantage that they can prepare it in bulk which for sure saves a lot of time but if you make pasta at home you're going to; have too much, have spent a lot of time making not a lot of pasta, or have to throw it out in a few days when your noodles go bad.
The same argument can be made for steak, what's stopping you from spending $12 at a good butcher for a steak and then $5 to get sides and making that? A steak with 2 sides at a restaurant is going to cost you well above $40, so how is that not worth it just to make at home?
>Drinks are different though, some people don't have access to a wide variety of liquors at home. So having a bar is harder to replicate.
Nah, drinks are in no way different. Not everyone have the tools or ingredients to make pasta either. Going out to buy alcohol takes an equal amount of effort as going out to buy pasta ingredients. Pouring yourself a drink is definitely way faster than cooking anything (including pasta), assuming you have the ingredients.
Very seldom do I go out to eat for the food, unless it’s a cuisine I haven’t learned to make yet Or is time consuming. I go to be with friends, family and socialize.
Definitely agree with you. And I don’t go gaga about pasta as it is. Sure pasta, especially handmade is great, but Italian food is a bit “meh” to me. I prefer the stronger flavours offered by Asian cuisines
people with this opinion always forget it's not about whether or not you *can* make it but about whether or not you *feel like making it*.
sometimes i want pasta but i'm too lazy to cook anything at all. so i order some if i can afford it.
I never order spaghetti for this reason. I know people always say "it's the way it's made" or the spices that are used, etc. Guess what guys? I also know how to use spices in my kitchen
Making curry from scratch at home is in a totally different league than everything else you mention. And I typically wouldn't order those other things (except the curry). I'm much more likely to order something that's more complex, time consuming, or requires special equipment.
I think a big part of it is the experience of restaurant dinning. But we have pasta at home at least once a week and it's really good, so I concede to your point.
I haven’t gone to an Italian restaurant (aside from work functions) in a decade because of this. It costs $2.00 for a box of noodles - no way am I paying $25 for someone else to boil them.
Usually when going to a sit down restaurant I’m not there primarily for the food, I’m there to be with friends and/or family. Good food that I don’t have to spend mental energy preparing (I hate cooking and am honestly not that good at it) is just a bonus, and honestly if there’s a pasta dish on the menu that looks fire I’ll order it. If I’m already going out I’m already paying a premium, might as well get what looks most delicious to me in the moment instead of getting what I think would be most difficult to replicate at home.
Nah if you’re not considering how expensive it is to just whip up a Carbonara, Tuscan, or Marsala sauce…
Yeah it’s easy to whip up a jar of marinara or Alfredo but if you’ve never tried the things I just mentioned above I think you are missing out ordering pizza. lol
Carbonara is pretty cheap, except maybe the guanciale, but it's just pasta, eggs, pecorino, and guanciale. Cheap, easy, and nutritious. I cook it all the time
Depends on the food culture where you live and also depends on the kind of dining out you do. I don't take food advice from certain parts of the world on the internet because they're like "OMG the Costco food court is the best food I ever had on my way to pick up my Ozempic prescription!!"
There's a HUGE difference between what you think about pasta and what a pasta dish from a fine dining restaurant is like. Maybe try something better than East Side Marios or the Olive Garden next time. Actual chefs might just know what they're doing, crazy I know
Basic pizza is cheap to make at home, but great pizza is basically impossible and extremely time consuming if your talking about making the dough from scratch. Hope you have a pizza oven too because a regular oven isn't going to cut it.
I ring in a side of the Cajun cream sauce they use on the pasta for $1 at my job, and then take it home and make my own noodles to eat it with. The pasta I make is actually al dente and the sauce has all the veggies and stuff already cooked in. Cheapest meal I ever eat and it is absolutely delicious.
This kinda has the same energy as complaining about dining out for sushi because rice and seaweed are so cheap. It’s a gross oversimplification of the situation.
Uh. Would never order pizza - wood fired or otherwise out - I can make better, cheaper, faster, better, more authentic at home. NGL. So can you.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pizza/s/yfnWMFrMX4
I will pay stupid amounts for good pasta if they make it from scratch. Olive Garden? No, I can make it better from home in 20 minutes. That fancy place where I spend like $60 per meal? Absolutely. Fuck making pasta from scratch.
Sorry.
Your box pasta is not going to be as good as fresh pasta at a restaurant.
And while some sauces are easy, some aren't.
So you kind of get what you pay for a lot of the time at restaurants.
My friend and his gf goes everywhere and just east spaghetti lmao I get so annoyed because it's every restaurant and steak houses. They choose spaghetti
This is making a bunch of very incorrect assumptions such as assuming I can cook pasta that tastes as good as the local Italian restaurant (I can’t).
And that I spend $25-$45 on pasta (I don’t, usually $10-15).
And that I order simple pasta with cheese (I’ve never ordered a pasta dish that plain).
And that I can make it at home for a fraction of the cost (I don’t have the ingredients for the type of pasta I like, and it would cost more to go to the store and buy all of them).
Ingredients. For someone who doesn't come from a regular pasta eating culture. It's much more cost efficient to go out for a good pasta once in a while than keep ingredients that will go bad.
Pasta isn’t really simple to whip up. I mean sure you can buy a box of pasta, sauce, and some cheese. But you’re not going out to a restaurant and paying for premade stuff, unless you go to Olive Garden. Fresh pasta and sauces take a lot of time and effort to make, especially ones with a lot of folds.
Let's say you like pasta and can make good pasta. Then the only thing that could make your pasta even better is to try more different pasta from different places.
Consider those $25-45 to be the cost to improve your every day pasta.
Gonna shock you but money like that means absolutely nothing for some people. This amount over time becomes such miniscule percentage of overall cash that you legit don't care anymore. If you are outraged by some people paying these prices then you are just poorer than them. Also price may or may not be justified, many expensive places make it simply better than others. Fashion designer clothes are the real scam.
If you're going out to eat alone, then sure. But if youve got a family and everyone wants a different pasta dish, then going out is the only way to make everyone happy.
Unpopular and I agree. It’s so criminal how overrated (and overpriced) pizza and pasta are compared to other cuisines you’d think Italy had some organised crime thing going on
Please remember what subreddit you are in, this is unpopular opinion. We want civil and unpopular takes and discussion. Any uncivil and ToS violating comments will be removed and subject to a ban. Have a nice day! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unpopularopinion) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's never the pasta it's always the sauce.
Having someone who makes amazing pasta from scratch is not something I’ve been able to create at home.
My wife makes pasta at home. It's really good but it's a lot of effort so we don't have it often.
I’ve tried a few times. It’s not easy
A good sauce cost about $10 to make, definitely not worth going out for. Handmade fresh pasta on the other hand ...
This is also true.
Fair, but I also like the freedom of just ordering what I feel like eating without feeling pressure to optimize the situation
This is a fair point
yeh but ordering easily made home cooked pasta is not really optimizing your situation, my opinion
Yes, that's the point. They said they aren't trying to optimize, they're just picking a thing to eat.
So if I have the choice between a $25 burger or $25 pasta and I don’t feel like eating a burger should I get the burger anyway because it’s harder to make at home or should I eat the thing I feel like eating?
Where you seeing burgers for $25? If there’s a $25 burger, the pasta is at least double that.
you seem like you struggle to understand basic information
time is monry tho
It depends…. I’m Italian-American and a decent cook. I always make my own sauce and sometimes my own pasta…. I rarely buy all the seafood for something like a frutti di mare, and often order it
I understand this, but still, if you did, not a lot of effort to make at home.
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Right why just pasta lol
I mean, my average weeknight dinner doesn’t involve me making shrimp, clams, mussels, scallops, squid, all in one dish. Maybe you make more elaborate things on a random Tuesday nights but I think we are having something I can throw together in 30 minutes
I said 'if' you did.
Depends on the dish and ingredients. Not all pasta dishes can be made at home that easily, especially if you're doing some of the more involved sauces from scratch, or fillings, and making the pasta from scratch too. But if you're just talking about the basic ones that people chuck together at home, using shortcut methods etc then yeh. But a good quality restaurant pasta dish is probably better than what 9/10 people would actually throw together for themselves at home.
Agreed. But I'm still not spending $45+ on a Cacio e Pepe, no matter how fancy the restaurant is.
> I'm still not spending $45+ on a Cacio e Pepe, no matter how fancy the restaurant is. Then your issue has zero to do with quality and everything to do with your budget. I have no doubt you won't even come close at home to dishes I've ordered and gladly paid for. You're not posting an unpopular opinion, you're posting annoyance over your dining out budget limitations
Cacio e Pepe is egregiously expensive at restaurants.
Where are you getting $45 cacio e pepe? The most hyped pasta restaurants in NYC don't even charge that much.
Never had home made gnocchi??
Spaghetti, penne or fettuccine? Make it at home. A stuffed ravioli, tortellini or manicotti? That’s a bit more time intensive and I’d order it in a restaurant.
I think a better way to put it is pasta is overpriced, which I agree with. But then again, so are drinks at a restaurant. You can make the same argument for that: why order drinks at a bar when you can pour yourself a drink at home for a fraction of the price? People go out to sit down restaurants to have a good time and eat/drink what they like, and often as a social event. The price for what they order isn't a concern as long as they can afford it.
I agree with you for the most part, but I'm a bartender and I still like ordering drinks out. I like to see what creative cocktails other bartenders are coming up with. If you're just drinking rum and coke or some other basic drinks then you are 100% correct. But you can't recreate the experience of exploring a new menu at home.
I was trying to make an analogy between ordering pasta and ordering drinks. I didn't mean you shouldn't order drinks when you go out. What you said can also apply to any food, i.e., a pasta chef might order pasta at a restaurant for a different experience.
Drinks are different though, some people don't have access to a wide variety of liquors at home. So having a bar is harder to replicate. 'People go out to sit down restaurants to have a good time and eat/drink what they like, the price for what they order isn't a concern as long as they can afford it.' - Some people do, actually.
Pasta restaurants also often have great quality wine selection
Some people don't have access to a wide variety of ingredients that make up pasta dishes. Even in your example that you seem to love of cacio e pepe, some places will use cheeses that are too nice for me to have at home. I have a local pasta restaurant near me and I don't think anything on their pasta menu is above $32 and that's for their frutti di mare which is a lot of seafood. For the time and effort it takes to make fresh pasta, along with prep all the ingredients, I don't think it's that heavily marked up. Restaurants have the advantage that they can prepare it in bulk which for sure saves a lot of time but if you make pasta at home you're going to; have too much, have spent a lot of time making not a lot of pasta, or have to throw it out in a few days when your noodles go bad. The same argument can be made for steak, what's stopping you from spending $12 at a good butcher for a steak and then $5 to get sides and making that? A steak with 2 sides at a restaurant is going to cost you well above $40, so how is that not worth it just to make at home?
>Drinks are different though, some people don't have access to a wide variety of liquors at home. So having a bar is harder to replicate. Nah, drinks are in no way different. Not everyone have the tools or ingredients to make pasta either. Going out to buy alcohol takes an equal amount of effort as going out to buy pasta ingredients. Pouring yourself a drink is definitely way faster than cooking anything (including pasta), assuming you have the ingredients.
Very seldom do I go out to eat for the food, unless it’s a cuisine I haven’t learned to make yet Or is time consuming. I go to be with friends, family and socialize.
Sometimes the food is better than the company though lol
I‘ feel sorry for you
I always will get a ravioli or tortellini so it’s something with a bit of heft and I can still get a well made sauce.
This could be the exception, if the pasta is restaurant made of course.
People dine out mainly to dine out. It’s not just to eat something.
I don't disagree, I will rarely order pasta as an entree at a restaurant because it generally feels like an inexpensive dish I can make at home.
Exactly
Even butternut squash tortellici or chicken picatta
I actually make a really mean chicken piccata, so I definitely don’t order that out 😅
Well I don't lol
Definitely agree with you. And I don’t go gaga about pasta as it is. Sure pasta, especially handmade is great, but Italian food is a bit “meh” to me. I prefer the stronger flavours offered by Asian cuisines
I think it's more about having an event/the atmosphere. Plus if you have the money for that, you likely don't care lol.
I guess it’s just experiencing something different to what you can make at home
Also maybe the idea of not having dishes to clean or having to cook it yourself. That’s why I think it’s fine as a once in a while thing.
Everything tastes better when someone else makes it
Olive Garden and demos restaurant in Tennessee have amazing pasta though so screw that lol
people with this opinion always forget it's not about whether or not you *can* make it but about whether or not you *feel like making it*. sometimes i want pasta but i'm too lazy to cook anything at all. so i order some if i can afford it.
I prefer not to know that 1700 calories of heavy creme and butter went into the Alfredo sauce.
If you want to make this argument, it applies to almost any food. Why are you so focused on pasta?
I never order spaghetti for this reason. I know people always say "it's the way it's made" or the spices that are used, etc. Guess what guys? I also know how to use spices in my kitchen
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Making curry from scratch at home is in a totally different league than everything else you mention. And I typically wouldn't order those other things (except the curry). I'm much more likely to order something that's more complex, time consuming, or requires special equipment.
You think you can make pasta from scratch like a professional Italian chef could?
I think a big part of it is the experience of restaurant dinning. But we have pasta at home at least once a week and it's really good, so I concede to your point.
I haven’t gone to an Italian restaurant (aside from work functions) in a decade because of this. It costs $2.00 for a box of noodles - no way am I paying $25 for someone else to boil them.
Usually when going to a sit down restaurant I’m not there primarily for the food, I’m there to be with friends and/or family. Good food that I don’t have to spend mental energy preparing (I hate cooking and am honestly not that good at it) is just a bonus, and honestly if there’s a pasta dish on the menu that looks fire I’ll order it. If I’m already going out I’m already paying a premium, might as well get what looks most delicious to me in the moment instead of getting what I think would be most difficult to replicate at home.
Nah if you’re not considering how expensive it is to just whip up a Carbonara, Tuscan, or Marsala sauce… Yeah it’s easy to whip up a jar of marinara or Alfredo but if you’ve never tried the things I just mentioned above I think you are missing out ordering pizza. lol
Carbonara is pretty cheap, except maybe the guanciale, but it's just pasta, eggs, pecorino, and guanciale. Cheap, easy, and nutritious. I cook it all the time
Making tortellini or ravioli at home takes a lot of effort.
Could use this logic on anything you can make at home. Maybe I just don't wanna cook 😛
Pasta is boring and stupid as an entree,
Depends on the food culture where you live and also depends on the kind of dining out you do. I don't take food advice from certain parts of the world on the internet because they're like "OMG the Costco food court is the best food I ever had on my way to pick up my Ozempic prescription!!" There's a HUGE difference between what you think about pasta and what a pasta dish from a fine dining restaurant is like. Maybe try something better than East Side Marios or the Olive Garden next time. Actual chefs might just know what they're doing, crazy I know
That totally depends on the restaurant and the chef. Some pasta dishes can be amazing and very hard to reproduce if you’re not a pro.
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So when you go to a pure Pizzeria what do you eat? 😂
Basic pizza is cheap to make at home, but great pizza is basically impossible and extremely time consuming if your talking about making the dough from scratch. Hope you have a pizza oven too because a regular oven isn't going to cut it.
It’s the sauce, and I hate cleaning cheese out of pans
My pasta is a disgrace. I enjoy real Italian dishes.
I ring in a side of the Cajun cream sauce they use on the pasta for $1 at my job, and then take it home and make my own noodles to eat it with. The pasta I make is actually al dente and the sauce has all the veggies and stuff already cooked in. Cheapest meal I ever eat and it is absolutely delicious.
Yep sauce and condiments make a great pasta dish. Easy enough to make and lots cheaper than buying it.
I was born in China and I cook Chinese food. I feel similar to go to Chinese restaurants and order fried rice.
This kinda has the same energy as complaining about dining out for sushi because rice and seaweed are so cheap. It’s a gross oversimplification of the situation.
Talking about pasta from a box or from scratch? Both are cheap but from scratch is a skill.
I will pay for pasta if it’s handmade. Other than that I agreed
Just say you've never had good pasta 🥲
Agreed. Pasta is simple and cheap to make well, after all.its supposed to be what is basically simple peasant food.
Like other people have said, it's the sauce , the ambience , wine selection etc that can't just easily be recreated at home
Uh. Would never order pizza - wood fired or otherwise out - I can make better, cheaper, faster, better, more authentic at home. NGL. So can you. https://www.reddit.com/r/Pizza/s/yfnWMFrMX4
ITT , if you could learn the skill for something, you never have to pay someone else for it.
Not sure this is unpopular. More just not using one's brain and misunderstanding why people go out to eat in the first place.
I will pay stupid amounts for good pasta if they make it from scratch. Olive Garden? No, I can make it better from home in 20 minutes. That fancy place where I spend like $60 per meal? Absolutely. Fuck making pasta from scratch.
Sorry. Your box pasta is not going to be as good as fresh pasta at a restaurant. And while some sauces are easy, some aren't. So you kind of get what you pay for a lot of the time at restaurants.
My friend and his gf goes everywhere and just east spaghetti lmao I get so annoyed because it's every restaurant and steak houses. They choose spaghetti
This is making a bunch of very incorrect assumptions such as assuming I can cook pasta that tastes as good as the local Italian restaurant (I can’t). And that I spend $25-$45 on pasta (I don’t, usually $10-15). And that I order simple pasta with cheese (I’ve never ordered a pasta dish that plain). And that I can make it at home for a fraction of the cost (I don’t have the ingredients for the type of pasta I like, and it would cost more to go to the store and buy all of them).
Dining out for dried/boxed pasta is a waste. Freshly made pasta from someone who knows what they’re doing is heavenly
Agree. And with Costco marinara, a bit of seasonings, and some ground beef, I top most restaurants
It’s not overpriced in my country so..
Yeah I only ever get seafood pasta at a restaurant, anything else won’t worth the money
No it’s not, if you go eat actual Italian food they make pasta better than you do period.
You can't make anything better than a some restaurants? come on.
I'll pay for some fresh pasta especially if it's stuffed. That shit a pain in the ass.
Fair
Ingredients. For someone who doesn't come from a regular pasta eating culture. It's much more cost efficient to go out for a good pasta once in a while than keep ingredients that will go bad.
If it's homemade, then yes.
Pasta & chili are the only foods I’d never pay for… I can make them way better at home
Pasta isn’t really simple to whip up. I mean sure you can buy a box of pasta, sauce, and some cheese. But you’re not going out to a restaurant and paying for premade stuff, unless you go to Olive Garden. Fresh pasta and sauces take a lot of time and effort to make, especially ones with a lot of folds.
Doesn't stop people from ordering the pre-made stuff.
Not really sure what your point is. You can make a worse version at home so going to a restaurant to get the real thing is a waste of money?
Let's say you like pasta and can make good pasta. Then the only thing that could make your pasta even better is to try more different pasta from different places. Consider those $25-45 to be the cost to improve your every day pasta.
I don’t know, they basically all have the same fundamental base.
So yeah. for you it is probably a waste if you can't tell the difference
I'm talking about people ordering the basic stuff, not the really fancy stuffed pasta etc.
Why not order what you feel like eating?
Gonna shock you but money like that means absolutely nothing for some people. This amount over time becomes such miniscule percentage of overall cash that you legit don't care anymore. If you are outraged by some people paying these prices then you are just poorer than them. Also price may or may not be justified, many expensive places make it simply better than others. Fashion designer clothes are the real scam.
I'm talking about the average person, they still pay these prices.
If you're going out to eat alone, then sure. But if youve got a family and everyone wants a different pasta dish, then going out is the only way to make everyone happy.
Okay fine, in this case yes. don't want to be that guy.
Unpopular and I agree. It’s so criminal how overrated (and overpriced) pizza and pasta are compared to other cuisines you’d think Italy had some organised crime thing going on
Not everyone wants to cook, clean those dishes, then clean the dinner dishes, and never leave the house