Real Food is continuing its disappearing act from restaurants across America. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the restaurant is a franchise or boasts 5 stars.
At a franchise restaurant like Applebees, Chilis, or Bob Evans, you would expect that cheap, processed food dressed up with a gourmet presentation would reign supreme. Food in these types of restaurants is only a small improvement over fast food in most cases and will make you feel just about as rotten shortly afterward (unless, of course, you already feel so rotten from eating processed food much of the time that you don’t notice).
But a 5 star restaurant?
I recently learned that Bern’s Steakhouse, one of the premier 5 star restaurants in my metro area, uses bouillon cubes (aka MSG cubes) to improve the flavor of its signature french onion soup (source: Bern’s waiter). I was devastated! This was one of the few restaurants I thought I was safe to order soup!
Who cares if Bern’s serves organic baby green salad and grassfed steak sourced locally if you still get a migraine from the MSG laced bowl of soup? It makes you wonder what other corners are being cut that you don’t know about yet despite all the lip service being paid to high quality.
Earth to Bern’s:Â Â Bouillon cubes are NOT high quality and should NOT be in your french onion soup.
Just sayin’.
I was also disappointed recently when I enjoyed an evening out at one of my favorite restaurants, Boizao, a Brazilian style restaurant also considered very high end for my Mom’s 80th birthday bash. Â One of my favorite dishes at Boizao is heart of palm with a special dressing. While serving myself a second helping that evening, the restaurant manager happened by and I took the opportunity to ask if it were possible for me to get the recipe for the heart of palm dressing. He then told me that they buy the dressing from a food supplier and that it came in “big bottles” (translation:Â cheap, rancid vegetable oils included). Â I was shocked speechless. Even more amazing, the manager didn’t even seem embarrassed by telling me this!
Didn’t know you were talking to a Real Food blogger, eh buddy?  Oops!  Secret’s out now!
Am I wrong to expect a high end steakhouse to mix up its own dressings fresh with quality ingredients like extra virgin olive oil? Is this too much to ask anymore?
I have reluctantly come to the sad conclusion that pretty much all restaurants have gone to the dogs in America. The only exceptions I come across anymore are tiny little restaurants where the owner is also the chef and simply will not allow these low quality substitutions.
5 star or no stars, the American restaurant dining experience has been relegated to a processed food affair regardless of the size of the tab.  Even if the meat and veggies are decent quality and prepared fresh, little effort is expended on the condiments, dressings, soups, and other extras that round out the meal and make a huge difference to the digestibility and overall nutrition of the experience, not to mention whether you will feel terrible the next day!
Bye Bye Maple Syrup
Another insidious trend taking place is the disappearance of real maple syrup from restaurants serving breakfast.  In a related story, Food Renegade wrote about the disappearance of butter from restaurants in a recent post.
Well, the maple syrup has disappeared too I’m sorry to add!   It used to be when my kids were begging for pancakes when we were traveling, I could at least ask for real butter and maple syrup to cover the bromated, bleached, synthetic vitamin enhanced white flour, garbage pancakes.
Not anymore!  My husband was at a Conference recently at a 5 star resort and when the kids and I joined him for breakfast one morning, I was shocked to discover that only fake, corn syrup sweetened syrup was available with the pancakes or waffles.
You would think that $8 for a plate of pancakes that probably cost the restaurant about 25 cents to make could get you some real maple syrup!   Of course, there was no butter to be found either.
Gotta pay all those property taxes for the golf course view, don’t we?
I saw the disappearance of maple syrup coming a couple of years ago when my family and I were eating at a fantastic little breakfast nook in downtown Sarasota FL.   Upon asking for some maple syrup, I was informed that it would be a $3 additional charge per 1 oz bottle of maple syrup that was provided.  Of course, the high fructose corn syrup sweetened ersatz maple syrup was free.
We paid extra for 3 tiny bottles of real maple syrup but I commented to my husband that it wouldn’t be long before even that option was no longer available.
Sure enough, here we are some months down the road and I haven’t been able to find maple syrup anywhere for quite some time.   I realize the price of maple syrup has gone through the roof, but is that really an excuse?
For IHOP? Â Maybe.
For a 5 star resort or a specialty breakfast nook that prides itself on quality? Most definitely not.
Maybe I should start bringing my own maple syrup to restaurants tucked discreetly into my purse.  But, then I would have to bring some butter and maybe some sea salt too.
Oh, forget it!  How weird and OCD would that be?   I’ll just eat at home!
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Imagine being able to officially and legitimately brag that your home kitchen is ‘Real Food Certified’ and that dining is ‘Invitation Only’.
How exclusive is that?
Ciao,
Pavil
We very rarely eat out since we don’t actually enjoy the food – or can’t afford to eat at the better quality restaurants (we do have a few). The in-laws came to visit for a month over xmas. They LOVE to eat out, and to keep the peace I gave in and did what I could to minimize the effects. Still, after two weeks and as many dinners out, I got a bladder infection for the first time in 15 years. And then, I couldn’t cure it on my own, and it moved into my kidney’s, so I had to take antibiotics for the first time in years and years. I just barely avoided being hospitalized, which I’m sure would have killed me. I’m still recovering from the antibiotics and the effects of all the crap food. I’m against restaurant food more than ever, but hey, just disparage me and call me orthorexic. And oh yeah, the inlaws are sure that I got sick from my “funny” food, not from eating like them (did I mention how they were on antibiotics during the whole visit?)!
Interestingly, I wrote about the same exact phenomena, only with coffee as an an example. With margin squeeze tightening the noose on restaurants, they are forced to either compromise their ingredients, give less food, raise prices, or all the above. I feel for the small business owner for who it is do or die, but places that can afford to eat rising costs and don’t – thats a good way to piss off customers. Continue to watch this trend…its just beginning.
I bring my low sodium tamari to our favorite sushi restaurant. I know people look at me strangely when I pull the bottle out of my purse, but a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do……to eat well.
Hi, Sarah,
This is off the subject of most of the posts, but since you mentioned it, I feel obliged to say something. Are you aware that to eat heart of palm, the palm trees are killed? Each palm tree has one heart, and in order to get it, the tree is cut down. Even if the tree is not cut down but the heart is cut out, it will kill the tree. There’s a great deal of poaching that happens in order to feed people their palm heart salads. It’s something people should avoid in order not to feed the poaching industry. Whether it’s poached or whether it’s farmed, it kills the trees. Farmed palm hearts may be a better choice, if you must have them, but can you be sure of their origin? Would the restaurant even know?
People eat processed foods all the time. They’re used to them. They expect them. They WANT them. They want their restaurant food to be the same all the time (hence so many chains) and they want it to taste similar to the stuff they’re used to eating. They wouldn’t know what to do with real food. And honestly, it might make them sick due to detox! Can you imagine someone on SAD going into a real restaurant and drinking a bottle of kombucha, having a bowl of soup with homemade stock, a fresh salad with real EVOO, and a grass-fed steak? Do you know how sick they’d initially be? And they wouldn’t get it. They’d run back to their processed, “safe” food. It’s extremely sad, but it’s the state of things in this country.
My daughter has actually learned (and will tell me, often), “We don’t eat fries at restaurants. We only eat fries at home.” It’s the only way to guarantee they’re made organic potatoes and safe oil!! And this is the case with many, many foods. Sigh. I don’t like it, either.
Even here in Quebec, the biggest maple syrup producing area, and we can’t often get it in restaurants. For Quebecers the other stuff is referred to, as what is loosely translated to, ‘telephone post syrup’ and waiters will often use that expression to explain the only syrup available.
Seems like this will only get worse as commodity price inflation puts a squeeze on the chain restaurants.
I’m totally OCD! I bring my own sea salt, butter, olive oil with me when I go out! I also NEVER let my daughter eat food at restaurants, so I bring food for her.
this is a very interesting post sarah. i am a chef in nyc and have been working in the industry since 1988. since then i have seen such a huge change in the way restaurants source ingredients and feed their customers. i have also witnessed what i would call food crimes committed by “celebrity chefs” who feel the need to “change” ingredients in order to play God and feed their egos (when they should be properly feeding their customers). in my opinion there are 2 main reasons why these changes have happened in nyc. #1 economic. commercial real estate is so high in nyc that most chefs are cutting back on ingredients in order to pay rent and staff. the smaller restaurants, 40 seats or less, can’t make a dime. it’s really a shame how hard these people work just to break even (huge rent, real estate taxes, small business tax, payroll taxes, etc). I spoke with a friend of mine who owns a successful restaurant and he asked why i haven’t been in with my family. i asked him if he could guarantee that his tortilla chips weren’t made from GMO corn and he said “no. i can’t afford that.” #2 is fads and press. Some chefs incorporate “non-food” ingredients to attract publicity. For example, when celebrity chef Paul Liebrandt beame the youngest chef (24 years) ever to receive 3 stars at Atlas in 2000, he was openly using Cap’n Crunch cereal and MSG in his food. He was hailed an innovator and a genius following in the footsteps of Ferran Adria, “one of the world’s greatest chefs” who built his career on making foam out of everything and denaturing whole foods by bringing forced chemistry into the professional kitchen and bastardizing real food. I find this inexcusable but they call it innovation and theater. because i am a chef we don’t need to eat out very often – but eat out less often these days because after all these years i know the drill. Most coking oil in professional kitchens is a mix (25/75) of olive oil and canola oil. Seafood is mostly farm raised, eggs and poultry are rarely pastured unless noted on the menu and then the entree is at least $30, all bacon has nitrites/nitrates and dairy is unfortunately pasteurized (the occasional raw milk artisinal cheese will find its way onto some of the better menus). Back in 1993 I opened Henrietta’s Feed & Grain in NYCs west village. The menu was seasonal and everything came from local growers that i had relationships with. whatever i kept in my fridge and pantry was also available for sale to my customers. I have not since seen another restaurant like my model and hope to someday open that restaurant again, but not in NYC. the space that i was paying $3,000 a month is now renting for $14,000. those numbers just don’t make sense. thanks again for another thought provoking piece.
Emily, I am completely dumbfounded by your comment. You have hit the nail squarely on the head. I had no idea about all this stuff. Seems my joke about needing to pay the property taxes for the golf course view was ironically on target. Thank you for posting this information.
Emily, thank you so much for exposing the truth about what these restaurants are doing. New York used to have the best restaurants in the country. What a shame.
I could not agree with you more about Adria and these chemist chefs.
I hope you can reopen your restaurant, it sound just wonderful!