
Why Some Cuisines Are More Expensive Than Others - pmcpinto
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/the-future-is-expensive-chinese-food/491015/?single_page=true
======
beat
There's a formula for restaurant finance - 30% ingredients, 30% labor, 30%
rent and other overhead, and (hopefully) 10% profit. This is broadly true
across the industry, at all price points. Much of the higher cost of "nice"
restaurants is higher quality ingredients (this is especially true of pricey
sushi-dominated Japanese, which pays a premium for the best fish). An
additional cost is prestigious locations.

Because of this formula, expensive restaurants are not necessarily more
valuable or profitable - merely more prestigious. I was talking to a friend of
mine the other day about his father's restaurant businesses. He owned two
restaurants - a prestigious steakhouse on a valuable lakefront, and a cheap
fast food chain location. He made _far_ more money slinging cheap burgers than
he ever made on fancy steaks. Cheap ingredients, cheap labor, cheap location,
very high volume!

~~~
ricree
Anecdotally, I've heard from a number of people that catering is one of the
larger profit centers for restaurants that do it, with the dine-in service
acting almost like a marketing tool, or sometimes even a loss leader.

~~~
toomanybeersies
Absolutely. The restaurant I used to work at did catering as well, and we made
far more profit from catering than from regular service. I don't think that
total income was more for catering though.

With catering, you only have to pay for the staff you need, when you need
them. You also often don't have to pay for the venue, or only have to pay for
renting furniture etc.

Part of the profitability also comes from the fact that you're already paying
for the kitchen, and often the venue (if it's hosted at the restaurant after
hours), so you're essentially removed 30% of the cost.

------
whack
I feel like I'm stating the obvious here, but prices are set by a combination
of both demand and supply. The article is focusing mostly on the demand side,
but the supply factor makes a huge difference as well. There are significant
immigrant populations from Mexico/China/India/Thailand, which means that
someone opening a restaurant catering to these cuisines, can hire "ethnic
chefs" at an affordable price.

In contrast, how big is the recently-French population in America really? And
how many professional French cooks can one really find? Even if the demand for
french food is much lower than the demand for Chinese food, the lack of supply
alone will drive up the price.

Note also the second effect of the above. If someone wanted to open a Chinese
restaurant, they can hire a affordable Chinese cook and market the restaurant
as a mid-price restaurant. Or they can hire an expensive Chinese cook and
market the restaurant as a high-end venue.

In contrast, if someone wanted to open a french restaurant, they don't have
the option of hiring a cheap French cook. It's go big, or go home... which
means that the pool of all French restaurants, is going to be heavily biased
towards upscale, expensive restaurants.

If you simply take the average menu price of all zagat-rated French
restaurants, and compare them to the average menu price of all zagat-rated
Chinese restaurants, you're going to find a big difference in these average
numbers, but a lot of it will simply be a result of the above price-bias. If
you're trying to investigate people's demand/perception for a certain cuisine,
the above results are going to be a highly distorted one.

~~~
beat
Modern French cuisine was codified by Escoffier. Not only did he nail down
what _haute cuisine_ was in terms of technique, he codified a process of
restaurant management, based on the military chain of command. Escoffier
trained up-and-coming chefs on how to structure large kitchens (up to hundreds
of staffers) and how to handle budget and marketing, to get the "right"
customers. In other words, he invented the modern large-scale upscale
restaurant business.

American and European cooking schools are all modeled on Escoffier's
techniques, as passed down through generations of chefs going back to those
worked under him directly. It's not just about the cooking. It's the white
tablecloths, the wine list, the dress code - it's about a restaurant
experience that says as much about who the customer is and what their role in
society is as it says about food.

Why require that gentlemen wear a jacket and a tie for dinner? Does it add to
the cost of the food? No. It's about standards. If you offer a gentleman a tie
so he may eat, you've said something about his station in life. That's why
waiters at such fancy places seem like they're insulting you - they're
actually insulting you! Because of this, the restaurants are expensive. Of
course they're expensive. Not because the food is superior, but because the
kind of people who would eat there expect it. At the best, putting prices on
the menu is a faux pas. If you have to think about the cost, you don't belong.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _That 's why waiters at such fancy places seem like they're insulting you -
> they're actually insulting you! Because of this, the restaurants are
> expensive. Of course they're expensive. Not because the food is superior,
> but because the kind of people who would eat there expect it. At the best,
> putting prices on the menu is a faux pas. If you have to think about the
> cost, you don't belong._

It sounds like you're saying that the purpose of French restaurants is to
signal your wealth/social class, and if you want good food that's worth what
you're paying, you should go somewhere else.

~~~
barrkel
And on the counterpoint, the best meals of my life have mostly been in the
French style, usually with matched French wines too.

~~~
beat
Yeah. Something I think that was lost in the original article was that French
and Japanese technique really _are_ superior to other cuisines. There's a
reason they're so dominant.

------
samatman
"And when Latin American and Asian food also become American food, it will be
a signal that the country has at last embraced a new generation of Americans."

I found this peculiar, given that the US has no fewer than four distinct
regional "Mexican" cuisines, not found in Mexico. These are Tex-Mex,
California Mexican food (e.g. the fabulous Mission burrito), New Mexican food,
and American Mexican food (think chimichangas).

New Mexican cuisine is older than the US, and middle-white America has been
eating tacos (with the crispy shell, itself a US development) for at least two
generations. They're about as American as Chef Boyardee at this point.

~~~
DougMerritt
Excellent point. But perhaps they meant "Latin American other than Mexico".

Here in Silicon Valley, there might be Argentinian, Brazilian, Chilean, etc.
restaurants that I'm unaware of, but even including the north bay, surely very
few.

And in most of America, predictably there'd be none in most towns and cities
(aside from New York, Miami, etc.).

Which is pretty different than Mexican, which is indeed widely embraced in one
form or another.

P.S. I did just see a new Cuban restaurant in the south bay the other day; I'm
not trying to say these things are _never_ here.

P.P.S. a fifth regional American "Mexican" cuisine is, I'm told, found far
from the coasts and from the southern U.S. border (possibly especially in the
Midwest), "Mexican" almost entirely in name only, which may e.g. use ketchup
as the only red sauce, and is often denied to be Mexican at all by fans of the
other 4 kinds.

I hear that something similar is what is usually, if not universally, found in
e.g. London as well.

~~~
mercutio2
I'm not sure why you'd go all the way to Marin, but I count 20+ such South-
American-inspired restaurants in the east bay in a casual search. I don't
really think of the north bay (or the peninsula) as culinary destinations, but
SF and the east bay are great for food.

Your point is well taken that most of the US is unfamiliar with any cuisine
further away than Mexico (and GP is right most of the Mexican is heavily
Americanized).

~~~
DougMerritt
(I meant "north bay" to include SF/Oakland/Berkeley, as opposed to the south
bay; not so much to go to Marin.)

That's interesting. I would have guessed half that number -- although if you
count each country in the central and south Americas, including island nations
like Cuba, isn't that roughly just one restaurant per country?

Also, bottom line, I'm pretty sure that 20 is quite dwarfed by the number of
Mexican restaurants in the Bay Area. Perhaps even if we only counted
taquerias, which seem to pop up almost once per block in some areas.

Thanks for making an actual numeric estimate.

> I don't really think of the north bay (or the peninsula) as culinary
> destinations, but SF and the east bay are great for food.

Agreed, although note that some good restaurants (if not Michelin-starred)
tend to be sparse, rather than nonexistent, in some of those more deprived
cities.

And even Michelin stars can be found in Palo Alto, Mountain View, Menlo Park,
Woodside, Saratoga and Los Gatos, which surprises many people.

------
beat
Something not really touched on here is how poor people's ethnic food can
become fashionable and achieve high prices and desirability, often far outside
its origins. Consider the recent bone broth craze, for example.

Here in Minneapolis, the current trend is Southern food, often made by
hipsters who grew up in Minnesota and have no real cultural ties to the South.
For me, with my half-southern roots, it's kind of bizarre to see stuff like
bologna sandwiches and collard greens popping up everywhere and commanding
high prices. That's the stuff you got at church luncheons and roadside shacks
in Kentucky.

I don't expect them to start serving burgoo made from red squirrels anytime
soon.

~~~
CuriouslyC
As someone who lives and has traveled extensively in the south, I have to say
that from a culinary standpoint the food is the best example of a true
American cuisine. New England also has a cuisine with cultural heritage, but
it isn't as quintessentially American as barbecue/southern food.

~~~
beat
It's definitely more strongly regional and more distinctive than other places
I've traveled in America. The only place that seems to compare for uniqueness
is California.

~~~
ferentchak
What would be an example of a dish that is very uniquely Californian?

~~~
Spellman
Depends on how back you go I suppose.

In modern cuisine, if it's got avocados, it's Californian!

If you want to go much further back, you get Mexican food.

~~~
Maultasche
Having lived most of my life in California, I was surprised to discover there
was such a thing as "California" food when I traveled to the East Coast about
10 years ago. It turns out that "California" food there was food that involved
avocados. I had never heard of such a thing before.

Avocados are definitely eaten in California, and they have been for as long as
I remember, but I'm not under the impression that it defines California food.
Occasionally, I'll get avocados in a sandwich, salad, or burrito, but that's
about it. Maybe eating avocados was so foreign to the rest of the country that
it became associated with California.

I guess if you don't live in other parts of the country, you don't have a
sense of which foods are unique to your region and which foods are common
throughout the country.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Maybe eating avocados was so foreign to the rest of the country that it
> became associated with California.

It's not hard to explain. They won't grow in the rest of the country. They do
grow in Mexico; I understand NAFTA hit the California avocado business pretty
hard.

------
ravenstine
Japanese food is way overpriced nowadays, and hardly "japanese". You have to
pay a ridiculous amount for actual Japanese food; anything mid-priced or below
is covered in fried breading, mayonnaise, and even jalapenos. I'm not against
"fusion" cuisine, but it sucks when there's so much of that it makes it
difficult to get the real thing.

Chinese food in America much cheaper because the ingredients are much less
costly and far less difficult to make. I don't think the value of Chinese food
really has to do much with the Western perception of the Chinese economy or
its people. That "Chinese" food is, in America, is designed to be tasty and
relatively inexpensive. Authentic Chinese food isn't as appealing or palatable
to most Americans.

~~~
Nadya
"Chinese" food in America isn't even "Chinese" food most of the time. It's
"Oriental-inspired" at best. If I go to a Chinese restaurant in the U.S, I
expect none of my dishes to be anything that would exist in a "typical"
Chinese restaurant. Hell, most of the food is considered American food by
Chinese people because it is so dissimilar to actual Chinese cuisine.

If I go to a Japanese restaurant I can expect them to have udon or sushi and I
know I can find those things at actual restaurants in Japan and Japanese
people may criticize aspects of it, but will recognize the udon and sushi as a
Japanese dish.

The few "authentic" Chinese places I've known to exist quickly shut down,
often due to a lack of patrons. As you said - I don't think it is appealing or
palatable for most Americans.

~~~
khuey
This definitely depends on where you live. Most major cities seem to support
at least a few "authentic" Chinese places (and some, like the West Coast
cities, NYC, etc, are loaded to the gills with them).

~~~
scholia
That may well be true but it's hard for tourists to find them. My experience
of "Chinese" food in San Francisco is that it's appalling, and in New York, my
Chinese wife wasn't even willing to try it. Fortunately, tourists are usually
very happy with "New York diners" and other exotic American restaurants, whose
authenticity is unquestioned.

~~~
ceras
I find this surprising. I've lived in the Bay Area and NYC, and by chance most
of my friends in both were immigrants from various Chinese-speaking places.
Nobody ever complained about the Chinese restaurants we went to, and some
would exclusively go to Chinese restaurants and eat quite happily (they never
grew a taste for western food).

It never felt like these were hidden gems: we just went to Chinatown in NYC,
for example. If you're particularly worried about authenticity, you can peek
at the clientele and see what percent is Asian.

Is your wife Chinese American by any chance? Anecdotally I've found that
Chinese Americans (and all other first gen Americans, e.g. Mexican Americans)
are _considerably_ pickier about their heritage food than immigrants. I'm a
first gen myself, and saw it in my first gen friends growing up too -- it's a
way to feel more attached to your cultural identity, one that you already feel
a bit like an outsider in.

~~~
scholia
To be fair, it's based on a _very_ limited amount of experience, but it has
been consistently bad experience.

Neither of us is American but we've eaten Chinese food in China, Hong Kong,
Malaysia and the UK, among other places.

~~~
khuey
Well, if you're ever in San Francisco again, I'd be happy to take you both to
good Chinese food. Email is in the profile.

~~~
scholia
That's a very kind offer. I used to visit San Francisco a couple of times a
year, but now I'm semi-retired, I may not make it for a decade ;-)

------
dragonwriter
The demand-side explanation offered isn't ludicrous on its face, but I expect
supply-side explanation is more the direct mechanism.

Sure, it has to do with economics, but not so much taste being driven by what
people eat in rich and militarily powerful countries, but the fact that rich
and stable countries don't have huge numbers of people that are very skilled
in their cuisine emigrating to the US and opening restaurants, saturating the
market and driving market-clearing prices down. Whereas Mexico, for instance,
does.

Mexican food isn't cheap in the US because people look down on Mexico, it's
cheap because there are so many people making it, and so many that could be
making it.

------
fma
I'll always favor eating real Chinese food than American food. You go to a
decent American restaurant, for $20-$30+ you get a plate for yourself. For $15
at a real Chinese restaurant, you get enough food for yourself and share with
another. The food comes out in mere minutes, even in a busy restaurant.
Chinese food is meant to be shared. You go to a western restaurant, you order
a plate for one person.

A real Chinese restaurant has round tables, so everyone is equidistant from
the food and can share among each other. You don't 'plate' a dish. You cook
everything and put it out there for everyone. Food is about the taste, the
freshness and quality.

You go there for bonding with friends and family. You don't pay dutch. One
person pays, and sometimes there's a fight on who pays.

Real Chinese food cannot be expensive, because Chinese people know how to cook
and won't go out. So often my aunts, uncles, family friends balk at going out.
They can cook just as good, and it's cheaper. I need to drag them out. If it's
expensive they'd never go out. You'd end up with food that caters to western
taste, because only they would pay for expensive Chinese food.

~~~
mc32
>A real Chinese restaurant has round tables

Round tables are for big parties. Restaurants in China, Taiwan, Malaysia, etc.
have two person and four person tables as well. They also have shared food and
non-shared food. It really depends on the restaurant type and the meal you're
ordering as well as occasion. (Recall, some people eat lunch by themselves
--most take it to go, some eat on premises.) You will see the round tables at
"banquet" restaurants, many in hotels, but not all.

Restaurant food in China, Malaysia, Taiwan, etc. is not all that different
from the ones you find in neighborhoods which cater to a ex-pat or first or
second generation Asians. They both cook with packaged ingredients, it cuts
costs, rather than from scratch as you might at home or _some_ street vendors
(many street vendors are franchised).

~~~
fma
I don't disagree with you, but the article is talking about restaurants where
you would spend a lot of money...not your lunch noodle shop.

~~~
mc32
This is not only evident mid-tier lunch establishments, but also in pricey
restaurants in those countries too (not the exorbitantly priced restaurants,
but the ones middle and upper middle go out for a good meal at the weekend.
For the most part round tables are found in spacious "banquet" style
restaurants (you may find others who have that too, but by and large, most
have tables for two, four and a few sixes).

Cheap places just have long foldable picnic style tables with benches where
anyone can sit anywhere.

------
kstenerud
"With China, [Americans] are still filled with this funny disdain, that it is
about cheap and crappy stuff, including about cheap and crappy food"

Because until very recently, it HAS been cheap and crappy food in America.
"Chinese food" has traditionally meant the chop suey that you take out from
Dragon Inn (and in many areas, it STILL means that).

I grew up with a severe dislike for Chinese food. It tasted like I was
literally eating out of a garbage can. The first time I ate at a Chinese
friend's place I was very leery, but it turned out of course that the Western
idea and the Chinese idea of "Chinese food" could not be more divergent. Good
food is good food, but Chinese cuisine has a long Western history to live
down.

To this day I still cringe whenever someone suggests Chinese cuisine, because
I never know which kind they have in mind.

~~~
stephenr
> but Chinese cuisine has a long Western history to live down.

a) don't lump the rest of the 'western' world in with America. "Chinese food"
in Australia is of course not authentic, but by local tastes is usually
delicious.

b) implying something has to "live down" implies that there is fault with the
item itself. Good Chinese food (or even good chinese-inspired food, rather
than authentic chinese) didn't force Americans to eat shit.

~~~
et-al
I think the parent meant "live down" in the American perception of Chinese
cuisine as being just "chop suey" and other greasy dishes.

The problem is that much of the early Chinese food cooked in America was by
miners/railroad workers who had few other job opportunities. It was not until
the late 1960s and 70s when actual chefs came to the States[0].

[0] [http://time.com/4211871/chinese-food-
history/](http://time.com/4211871/chinese-food-history/)

------
tomcam
I spent 40 years as a non meat eater, and great vegetarian food is
consistently cheaper than mediocre food with meat in it. I had a lot of
girlfriends before I got married, and they were always bemused because I
tended to buy non-meat appetizers that tasted great, in place of an entree. I
also love the non-meat goodies that come with the entrees in steakhouses. I
have often ordered an entree without the steak, and the prices are
bewilderingly low for very good food.

------
mwfunk
Fascinating article, although I'm a little taken aback when anyone uses the
phrase "ethnic food" nowadays. I didn't realize people said it anymore, it
sounds like a relic of the '50s.

I'm also bitter because I grew up in a household where anything that was even
remotely different from the same bland 4-5 dishes we ate every single day was
considered strange and exotic by the rest of my family. I would love to hang
out with certain relatives and be able to suggest Indian or Thai food without
getting a reaction like I want them to construct an interdimensional portal so
we could go eat food from an alternate universe where everything's made out of
pure thought and energy.

~~~
donretag
I dislike the term "ethnic food" and foodie cultural in general when it comes
to foreign food.

There is a restaurant that I like to get my culture's home cooking. Nothing
fancy, just home cooking. You do not even know it is a restaurant since there
is no storefront except for a social club awning. I could never remember the
exact street it is on, so when looking for the address one day, I came across
reviews for the restaurant. First of all I was shocked that "outsiders" went
to eat there. Good for them. But the reviews by these foodies went on into
detail about every aspect of the food. It is home cooking! I felt like the
food was an animal in a zoo and people were paying to see these strange
creatures. They were there not for the environment, the culture, or even the
food. They were there to see how these other people eat. I am sorry if
American food is bland, but do not treat cultures like animals in a zoo.

~~~
jinushaun
I think everyone has been to enough potluck and home cooked dinners to know
the difference between good and bad home cooking. That's the problem with
"authentic" cuisine. It's no guarantee of quality. Likewise, "home cooking" is
also not a free pass for poorly made restaurant meals.

~~~
donretag
To be clear, the reviews were not negative. To me, they were too focused on
details that did not matter IMHO. They were trying very hard to be foodies,
missing the point of the food and the restaurant.

------
Animats
From the operational end, some cuisines take much more kitchen effort than
others. Pumping out carbs in pasta form is a cheap operation. French cooking
is more labor-intensive.

There are many Italian restaurant chains, but few French restaurant chains.

~~~
tptacek
If you're making pasta yourself, which high-end places do, it's pretty labor-
intensive. It requires an entire additional shift.

------
mtw
If the theory is right, then German, Swiss or Singaporean restaurants should
be at the top of the list

~~~
showerst
Looks that got wrapped in 'Continental' in the Zagat numbers, which is pretty
high.

Anecdotally here in DC Germanic restaurants are almost all Biergarten type
places that emulate 'street' food, and there isn't any fine dining to bring up
the averages. I imagine that's true in most of the US.

Fun outliers I can think of are Filipino and Laotian, which are both fairly
expensive vs the country prestige, but of course there's a tiny sample size.

~~~
CuriouslyC
"Real" Filipino food is street food, and pretty unappetizing. Offal, adidas,
sausage made of who knows what, betamax, roast/fried pig feet/ears, brain,
etc, all served with a side of white rice and washed down with san miguel.

That being said, lechon, oxtail stew and sinigang are awesome, but not what
most Filipino people eat on a regular basis.

~~~
stephenr
> "Real" Filipino food is street food, and pretty unappetising.

Unappetising to western tastes, I think is what you meant.

> sausage made of who knows what

That's what a sausage is, unless you make it at home.

> roast/fried pig feet/ears

I've come to enjoy roasted pigs tail (technically its the tailbone from the
carcass, rather than the actual curly part of the tail) and its fucking
amazing.

~~~
CuriouslyC
Well, I observed that as Filipinos made more money they tended to stop eating
that food, so I don't think they're that into it either. I will admit that the
deep fried pigs feet are very tasty though.

If I had to pick one thing Filipinos loved most, it would definitely be fried
chicken. They also seem to have a soft spot for spaghetti with an extremely
sweet tomato sauce.

------
SwellJoe
This has Indian food near the bottom of the list, but in most of the places
I've lived, Indian restaurants have been among the more expensive places I
frequent. Of course, I'm not frequenting Zagat rated places, and I have a
fondness for cheap Chinese food and taco trucks and taquerias, so I tend to
like cheap and non-fancy places. But, I think I've only lived in one city
(Houston) that had really good and really cheap Indian food from multiple
restaurants, whereas cheap Chinese and Mexican food is available almost
everywhere in the US.

Nonetheless, it's an interesting observation. I wonder what will take the
place of cheap Chinese, if those prices rise? Most other Asian cuisine is on
the higher end and rising.

~~~
parennoob
Indian food often has a much higher proportion of purely vegetarian dishes
(~50% or more) compared to these other cuisines, which I think is party
responsible for the discrepancy.

~~~
SwellJoe
The discrepancy I see (that Indian food is pricey in most of the places I've
lived, while the original article has it near then bottom), or the discrepancy
between Chinese and Indian? I can't tell if you're saying the cuisine having
more vegetarian options is a reason for it to cost more, or the opposite.

Anyway, I'm vegetarian (vegan lately), so I'm always comparing vegetarian
options across the board (and another reason I like Asian restaurants more
than most other options; there's always more items on the menu that I'd eat).
It seems like vegetarian options are usually cheaper than those containing
meat, at Chinese restaurants. The same is not always true at a lot of other
kinds of restaurant; for example, a burger place will usually charge more for
a veggie burger, a pizza place will charge more for vegan cheese (if they even
offer it), etc.

------
mc32
>.."Consider the cases of steak frites and carne asada. They both involve
cooking a fairly high-quality cut of meat over high heat, and they’re both
dishes whose origins are foreign to America."

One of the biggest differences here, but not mentioned, is Parisian as well
and "Peking" cuisine is "imperial" or dynastic. Many other cuisines have more
rustic heritage, i.e. "peasant" food. Yes, ultimately Parisian and "Peking"
cooking can trace back to peasant origins, but many were refined in imperial
palaces --thus the prestige. Mexican, British, Russian food is quite squarely
in the "peasant" bracket.

------
gumby
A really interesting theory that with relevance beyond cooking. The global
discussion of programming, for example, is dominated by the high ranks of per
capita GDP, music by the GDP rankings of a few centuries ago. I had assumed it
was all path dependency, but perhaps that's putting the cart before the horse.

I found the discussion of Italian vs French food especially interesting since
what we think of as "French" cuisine was brought from Italy to France in the
early 17th century by Marie de Medici who considered France an uncultured
place compared to her native Tuscany.

------
gerhardi
Average chinese meal for one over $35? Sounds like a lot..

~~~
deadmutex
That includes a glass of wine + tip, and it has to be a Zagat rated restaurant
in NYC. Also "average" implies mean, which could be slightly biased upwards
due to having some high end restaurants in the list (compared to a median)

~~~
chronic81
Average can be biased downward due to the large number of "cheap" places.

~~~
imauld
Your average Chinese take out in NY isn't Zagat rated so wouldn't be included.

------
garyclarke27
Interesting and crazy that Italian food is so high, considering it has the
cheapest ingredients, hence why pizza restaurants are the most profitable I
suppose. For me Thai is easily my favourite cuisine, yet ranked bottom, I
don't think this is true in UK, where is average price, though like US
Japanese is most expensive and French second. For me French is way over rated
esepecially Michelin starred French restaurants with exorbitant prices
especially for wine, tiny portions, why do they make everything into a foam?
the novelty soon wears of. I much prefer authentic Chinese restuarants with
large round tables where you cant fit two families around, kids friendly till
late at night, I love the sharing of all dishes, so much better than
individual servings, which isolate the experience.

~~~
et-al
Italian food nailed the ambiance and service down. Date night? Italian food.
It's a safe bet your dinner date will enjoy it, there's a waiter who's
friendly and helpful, and cloth napkins!

But yes, the price of good pizza is nuts in the States. I'm in Berlin right
now and a damn good pizza at Il Casolare is a humble 10€, whereas in San
Francisco, it'd easily cost at least $20 (and you'd have to stomach a
pretentious story as well).

------
nitwit005
Interesting, but I feel this is missing the culture's impression of their own
food. Not everyone values their cuisine to the same degree, or at least, not
all of it. It's hard to get something pushed into "fine dining" menus when
there is no one suggesting that it qualifies.

