Oh, pie! Good point. I make an excellent fruit pie. (Apple, blueberry, cherry, apple-cranberry, blackberry, mixed fruits…) I don’t buy commercial pie. They are too sweet, not tart enough, and mostly, they don’t have enough fruit – they fill the pie shell with goo instead of with fruit. It’s just goo with bits of fruit floating in it. My pies are solid fruit with just enough sauce to hold them together (and sometimes not even that much, they sometimes do fall apart.) A fruit pie should be a celebration of the cooked fruit.
Seems like there’s no lack of accomplished cooks in this thread and I’m happy to be among them. So I’ll echo pretty much all the sentiments about avoiding ordering that which we make better ourselves, at home.
That said, there are a few exceptions to the rule:
- I’ve yet to taste a risotto better than mine, BUT, if the restaurant is serving it with freshly shaved truffles, we’re getting the risotto
- Fresh made pastas, gnocchi, stuffed tortellini in interesting sauces, if the restaurant specializes in same
- We make pizza from scratch at home and it’s spectacular, but we don’t have a 900F wood burning brick oven so if we’re in the mood for pizza, that’s where we go
Yeah, most restaurants use canned fruit and a shit-ton of cornstarch to thicken it. That makes certain that the filling won’t just run out when the pie is cut, but it does make a disgusting goo. Also, if the crust has that shine from being brushed with egg white, I won’t order it. My mother ruined me for restaurant or bakery pie.
Hot dogs. I don’t think I’ve bought one prepared since I learned the trick to perfect bun steaming at home. Drench a paper kitchen napkin and squeeze the water out. Flatten out the napkin and wrap the bun in it. Microwave for 15 seconds.
To the ‘you can’t buy the best beef at retail’ discussion, I’ve heard it said that buyers for high end restaurants pay a premium to get first crack at cherry picking the best supplies. It’s not just steaks/primals, they get the finest avocados, daintiest microgreens, most petit brussels sprouts, least blemished potatoes, etc. ‘Prime’ covers quite a large range of marbling and other metrics, from the ‘barely made the grade’ to the $25/ounce artisanal cut of beef.
It’s also true that restaurant buyers select for things like uniform sizes. A relatively small 1.5 pound rack of baby back ribs or live Maine lobster may cost more to the restaurant than grocery wholesale price per pound. One reason is so everything cooks and plates predictably. Another is to keep portions reasonable & realistic. And no one wants to see a server bring out a rack of ribs to another table that’s clearly smaller than what’s on your own plate.
Pie-ling on the bandwagon:
I’m ok with canned fruit. And with starches. But I don’t want a slice of cherry pie that has six cherries floating in congealed syrup. I want an inch-thick slab of barely-sweetened cherries.
But yes, pie. Most purchased pie is gross.
Personally, probably the only thing I can cook better than a (decent) restaurant is scrambled eggs. I’ll still order that if I’m in the mood.
I make the best Ruben in the world, but I’ll still order one at least once in a restaurant I’ve never had it before. Just to make sure that’s still the case. 
Things I make better than restaurants:
Meatloaf, eggplant Parmesan, lasagna ( both veggie and meat) steaks, Mac and cheese, hamburgers.
I go out for the experience, waited on, no clean up. So I order stuff I wouldn’t make at home.
On the one hand, there’s plenty of stuff that I make to my own tastes, and a restaurant isn’t gonna meet my tastes so exactly.
On the other hand, if I’m eating out, I’m enjoying the not cooking.
But the big thing is, if I’m eating out, I kinda want to try something that I’m not great at making, either to get ideas, or so I can get a fix of something I can’t otherwise get.
So things like spaghetti and grilled cheese aren’t my go-to, not because I snub them with a thousand upturned noses, but because there’s probably pizza or hamburgers on the menu, and those are more of a pain to make at home. (My homemade pizza and burgers are just fine–they’re just time-consuming either to make or to clean up from.)
Oh, you made me realize something: I travel for work, and sometimes restaurant choices aren’t something I have the luxury of deliberating like I do when I’m at home. This, everything I said above applies to home/vacation spots, but not necessarily business travel, where I’ll eat at generic restaurants.
At generic restaurants, especially on first visit, I tend to order patty melts. If they do that well, them I’m willing to give them a chance on other standards, and I love patty melts and they’re not something I generally make at home. If they don’t have patty melts, then I’m willing to order anything that’s within my travel guidelines.
There’s stuff I don’t eat out because I don’t trust it. For instance, I don’t like peppers. Hot, sweet, red, green. I can enjoy a raw green pepper, but once they ripen or get cooked, they develop this really nasty flavor…
So I never eat meatloaf, because the odds are too high that it has green pepper in it. I’m very cautious around anything with red sauce – same reason. I ask about other dishes.
But that’s not because “I like mine better”, that’s because I hate theirs. I suppose people with food allergies must make similar choices.
what’s a patty melt?
Basically a cheeseburger with onions on bread instead of a bun. Rye usually.
And here’s a recipe for a patty melt with nice visuals.
I think of it more as a rye grilled cheese with tons of onions and a hamburger patty in it, but same difference. For me, the bread definitely has to be rye (I mean, technically, it doesn’t, but for my tastes, yes) – it needs to be fried in a good bit of butter like you would a grilled cheese, and the onions have to be caramelized and there need to be lots of them. As for cheese, this is personal preference. Cheddar, swiss, American are all fine and usual. The melt is not decorated with any other condiments. At the table, though, I will put mustard on it, and eat with pickle spears on the side. They are delicious, but they will kill you.
I’ve never had a Chinese restaurant beat my Hot & Sour Soup. A friend gave me a simple recipe years ago, and it’s great. I’ve shared it many times.
I’ve tweaked it a little over the years. The best thing about it is that everyone can personalize it: Adjust all quantities to taste; Shredded pork (or chicken) or not; Any kind of mushrooms (or mixed); Firm or soft tofu.
Here are the 2 most important details. Start with College Inn Chicken Soup. Just before serving, add a generous amount of Chinese sesame oil.
The NY Times app recipe for egg drop soup is astounding. And it lets me finally use the dried tiny shrimp I bought in Chinatown 20 years ago.
Well, would you prefer a normal life with patty melts, or to live to 100 with NO patty melts?
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I kindly suggest that you never even consider travelling to Italy.
Stating that opinion there would be about as safe as going to England and loudly declaring that Tea is “just some dried weeds soaked in hot water”
I prefer “New Mexico” style stacked enchiladas with the sauce only on the lightly dipped tortillas.
The wrapped style drenched in a gallon of sauce is terrible. The tortillas turn to mush, you can’t taste anything other than the sauce, etc.
I have the USAAF to indirectly thank for this. Got into them via someone who was stationed in NM during WWII.
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And it actually COULD be Prime even if its graded as choice.
I took a BBQ class offered by my local JuCo and taught by a butcher who specialized in offering high end meat for retail use. My recollection of his lecture on grading -
Most times beef is graded Top-Down based on the ORDERS that the grader is attempting to fill.
As an example, if the grader has 100 Prime, 200 Choice and 300 Select to grade then he will inspect and grade sides of beef according to the quality of meat UNTIL he grades 200 Prime. He may already have graded a number of select and choice as he workes down the line.
At the point he has met the Prime quota he will set down the Prime stamp and grade remaining prime sides with Choice.
As soon as choice is filled he will grade all remaining sides as select regardless of the quality (assumption is that all sides are above Standard grade).
This system can fool the retail shopper. Meat cannot be advertised as any grade other than it’s wholesale grade. So somebody buying steaks on sale at his local Piggley Wiggley might just luck out and get himself a choice or prime cut. He might mistakenly believe that the Select grade beef from PW is always going to be fantastic not knowing that it was luck not quality he experienced.