Yeah, I can find 80-20 chuck at around $2.99/lb around here. No chub, either. But it’s usually family
pack size, meaning around three pounds or more.
Oh my.
OH MY!
The price of an Outback meal has gone up $3 dollars in the past 6 years. Why, that’s $0.50 a year. How dare they! The unmitigated gall of that place.
I have to find me a paper bag. I’m hyperventilating just from reading this. The outrage. The OUTRAGE! Inconceivable!
Hey, it’s Outback. I’d say acey is better off cooking at home.
Searing steaks for science, by Adam Savage (Mythbusters) and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt (Serious Eats).
Believe it or not the top-level steakhouse makes fairly little money on the steaks. These are not your supermarket cuts. They are not choice, they are prime, and they are dry aged. You want to buy dry aged prime cuts to cook yourself? Here’s a place to order them. That 10 oz NY strip prime dry aged will cost you $39.95 to buy raw. Think that’s being selective? Here’s another. The 4-pack of raw 12 oz dry aged prime NY strips is $199.
Truth be told you are getting a very good value having that NY strip prepared just right served with good ambience for $42.99.
They make the money on the “upsell” of drinks and sides, especially the drinks.
I would like to add my 2¢ to the other wonderful answers here.
There is alot to be said for keeping out the unwashed masses. If I had the ways and means I would gladly pay way more for the same food I get at Denny’s or red lobster, just to eat in peace and civility.
I don’t think I’ve ever made more than poverty level income, so I’m on a McDonald’s budget, but being in the music/high end motorcycle business has gotten me few passes into the rich people bars/ restaurants/hotels.
I was VERY impressed with real customer service, it was shocking. Then add to that the lack of crying babies, dining table diaper changes, uncouth patrons and horrible bathroom facilities… I was floored. I finally realized why rich people pay way more.
Looking at this from a business owners point of view,I met a guy who made hand built guitar amps and asked why he charged SO much.
The answer was he was in high demand, at a low price point he made enough but had to hassle with working people who demand alot and will only buy one of his amps in a lifetime and feel impovershed by the price.
At triple the price, he builds fewer amps, makes more money overall with less hassle… and happy customers buy several amps and are thrilled with the experience.
How much does steak quality depend on how the chef beats his meat?
Pick the wrong night, and you can find the same thing in tonier places. Money doesn’t teach manners, and can often exacerbate bad ones.
Keep in mind I’m usually paying for 4 people. The last time we went Ben Franklin couldn’t pay the tab.
The entire meal was nearly $120 with tax. Then there’s the 15% tip.
It’s just not worth it. YMMV
I can take the family for Pizza for under $35.
HA! I travel to Vegas frequently for business conventions and as I read you list my mental commentary was:
“Been there, excellent. Been there. Been there too. Been there. Carnevino, been there had a $1200 bill for 4 people. Sure, why not order another bottle of wine! grumble Been there. Oh, never been to The Country Club. Been there, there, and there!”
MeanJoe - Devout Carnivore and Lover of Steak
No.
Outback for 4 for $35 still wouldn’t be worth it.
How is the customer service different from middle ground restaurants? What things are present that would otherwise be absent in the service or vice versa?
I love it when a server scrapes away breadcrumbs from the tablecloth.
I took a look at a Western Sizzlin menu because I have never heard of this chain.
The only aging those steaks receive is the time between when the farmer notices his old milk cow has died and the “fallen cattle” guy shows up to truck it away.
Don’t forget the 6 months it spends in the freezer!
That’s a bit high, even for Ruth’s Chris. $50 should get you at least a 16oz porterhouse.
I find all this talk of Outback steaks offensive.
The crumb scraping is nice, but it’s not that important to me. In the higher priced places, the servers have fewer tables and that allows them to pay more attention to each one. You don’t have to look around and try to get your server’s attention if you want another drink, or you’re ready to order dessert or you want the bill. Special requests are handled better- in the lower end places, if my husband asks for no cheese on his salad, I often end up with no cheese on mine as well. More than once, my husband has ordered a steak medium rare in a mid-priced restaurant and it came out medium-well. On at least one occasion, he was told “that’s the only way it comes”. Those mistakes don’t happen in the high end places, and if it did ,there would be an apology rather than an attempt to deny there was a mistake. The servers know the menu better in the higher end places and can describe a dish in words that aren’t used on the menu,while at Applebee’s I’m likely to get a blank state if I ask which whole grains the Pepper crusted Sirloin is served over. The servers and bus people are quieter, and it doesn’t sound like they are just dropping the dirty dishes into a bin in the middle of the dining room.
Excellent summary of the service, doreen. To add a few thoughts, in a high end restaurant if the steak is not cooked to your specifications and you mention it to the waiter he whisks it away and brings back a perfect one. If he asks how everything was, and you mention that your side dish was cold, they take it off the bill, and apologize. We took a friend to a very expensive place for her birthday, and when I made the reservation, they asked if it was a special occasion. I told them it was a birthday. They put a birthday card on the table for her, and gave her a free dessert that was a small chocolate cake (these words cannot convey how wonderful it was). She shared it with us and they happily brought plates and forks and extra ice cream. For free. So, they made us feel very welcome. (Plus we had the very best appetizer I have ever tasted: lobster tacos with some sort of cream dressing…)(We need to go back there!)
You could cook a pizza at home for under $10, too. You could probably make a nice dish of spiced rice and beans for your family, with leftovers for days, for under $5.
It’s a different experience between going to steakhouse and going to a pizza parlor. The pizza joint is probably going to be brighter, it’s not going to have any sort of wine or beer selection, you’re going to be using paper napkins, and you probably have to bus your own table. The waiter will be able to tell you a bit about the items on the menu beyond a list of ingredients. The price differential between $8 and $30 a person pays for that atmosphere and those amenities, as well as the difference in ingredient cost between a steak and a pizza.
The even higher end restaurants wouldn’t fuck up your steak in the first place.