🚀 go-pugleaf

nellie4526@mindspring.com wrote:
> Elmo <DoNoSpam@NoSpam.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Portion sizes contribute to the problem by providing more calories than
>>any reasonable individual should consume which interacts with the ingrained
>>edicts to "Clean Your Plate!" [1] and "It's a sin to waste." so that we
>>consume more calories.  Where really upscale restaurants charge a lot for a
>>plate containing a relatively small portion, carefully prepared and very
>>carefully presented "for your dining enjoyment", it's more common to see a
>>family-oriented place providing much larger portions.  I think that some of
>>it has to do with the economics of the restaurant business.  You need to get
>>a certain amount of money over and above what the cost of the food to cover
>>overhead -- building, heat, taxes, owner's profit margin, etc.  If you're an
>>upscale joint, your clientele is paying a premium and knows it.  If you're a
>>local beanery or a franchised operation (like Friday at Applebee's in the
>>Outback or Chili Tuesdays with Ruby etc.) your clientele needs a more practical
>>reason to part with more money than the food is "worth" and if you give them
>>a big portion they won't feel so bad about paying for it.  So you load them
>>up with low-cost calories in the side-dishes.  French Fries, pasta, nacho
>>chips, and the like.  Price the individual sides high but include 2 or 3
>>with the platter specials at a price that's lower and you get people who
>>buy the special and eat the extra calories.  Worse, they come to accept that
>>as a "normal" portion size.  And I don't even want to think about the kind of
>>specialty foods that you can buy at entertainment venues (sporting events,
>>fairs, and the like).  Huge funnel cake -- about 6 pancakes worth of batter
>>fried in oil and dusted with sugar.  Deep fried Twinkies (frozen, dipped in
>>batter and deep fried) for Fud's sake!  And Doughnuts!  How many workplaces
>>have a Doughnut Day where when it's your turn you're supposed to bring in
>>2 or 6 dozen of those delightful fat pills.  Oink! Oink! OINK!
> 
> 
> Some restaurant chains (Bob Evans) have a few choices with more
> reasonable portion sizes, but then they manage to jinx that by
> labelling them "for our friends 55 and over".  Nice touch!  If I
> choose a reaonable size, I'm labelling myself as an old fart.  I also
> hate the giganormous soda sizes many places offer.  "Small" is 20 oz.!
> That's obscene.   Taco Smell is a good example.  Get one of their
> combos and they give you a cup that could satisfy a family's thirst.
> At least I learned that I don't have to fill the friggin thing up. The
> national "vegetable" is french fries.  Once again, you can choose your
> poison - small (already too big), medium, or large.   A 1/3 lb. burger
> is now considered small.  Heck, go for the 2/3 lb. or 1 lb. thick
> burger.  And don't even get me started about steak houses - 32 oz.
> steak?!  That's piggery at it's ultimate.

It's true that no one person has to eat all the stuff, 
but when the prevailing cultural ethos is that more 
food - more mediocre, thoughtlessly conceived, poorly 
executed food - is preferred to less, then nasty huge 
portions of food will be the standard.

France and the French have taken a lot of abuse in 
red-state America over the past few years, and the 
French certainly have their faults, but on food they 
get it absolutely right.  The weighting is toward the 
quality axis rather than the quantity axis of the 
graph.  A big part of this is because the chef in a 
French restaurant, in France, *cares*.  He loves food, 
and he cares passionately about it.

In these horrific excess emporiums in America, 
particularly the Fridays/Applebees/Chilis/Max-and-Ermas 
chains, no one cares about the food.  It's all an MBA 
project, intended to make money.  If the MBAs running 
the places thought they could make more money selling 
engine valves to GM or collection services to banks, 
they'd be doing that.  They don't *care* about food.

The chefs in restaurants in France care about making 
money, to be sure, but they also care passionately 
about food and the dining experience.  They care enough 
that when they put a plate of carefully prepared food 
in front of you, they are saying in effect "This 
quantity is the *right* quantity."  Because American 
chain restaurateurs don't really care about food, and 
because the raw ingredients are too damned cheap due to 
factory farming, they figure they can cheaply 
compensate for the low quality and slovenly preparation 
by piling it on.  Regrettably, it works.

My theory of this sad state of affairs is this.  The 
people who came to this country, for the most part, 
were poor.  Getting enough to eat before they came here 
was not guaranteed, and they were less concerned with 
quality than with getting enough food to survive.  They 
were from the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, and 
they didn't have sophisticated palates; they didn't 
have the option of choosing between a reasonable amount 
of good food and a barrel full of crap.  They got here, 
found productive land, and the bountiful harvest 
overwhelmed their senses.  Cheap quantity simply 
crowded a concern about quality off the page.  And so, 
you see this: 
http://fatchicksinpartyhats.com/images/fathat34.jpg