We went to Kroger after and I bought two tenderloin steaks for tonight for $14. We don't have a kitchen right now, so we're microwaving veggies, bought some asparagus. Was thinking how cheap it is to eat at home even with pretty good steak. I probably will open a bottle of decent wine so that throws the math out the window.
My problem sometimes with cooking at home is that I ended up "saving" money only when you compare the steaks I buy to what they'd cost at a high-end steakhouse. At my butcher shop, tenderloin is $32.99/lb right now. It's AMAZING, but it ain't cheap. I don't usually buy steak there except for special occasions, but damn...
Honestly, the bottle of decent wine costs less than several glasses of much lower-quality wine at the restaurant. Our "best" wines from our travels are pretty well all under $50/bottle. That's $12.50/glass. But again those are mostly special occasion wines. Our "typical" nice wine usually isn't more than $20-25/bottle. Glasses of wine at restaurants around here range from $10-16 on average, and they're nowhere near as good as those bottles. On a date night, my wife might have 2 glasses of wine and I'll have 2-3 beers, and that right there is ~$40+, compared to ~$15 at home.
I often dine out and get things that I can't or won't make at home. As mentioned earlier, things like dumplings that I love but require technical proficiency I haven't taken the time to master. Or pho broth which no matter how many times I've attempted it, I can't do as well as my favorite Vietnamese restaurant.
Yeah, I do a lot of Asian food, but dumplings are a skill I have not quite gotten yet. I want to learn to make Xiao Long Bao (soup dumplings) since my wife has a poultry allergy and they pretty much universally use chicken stock in them at restaurants. But my dough skills are NOT up to it just yet.
Pho is another thing I make at home because we worry about cross-contamination with chicken out at restaurants, so I can't take her to pho joints. But pho seems like one of those things that becomes MORE expensive to make at home than to get out at a restaurant. I swear making 4 servings of pho costs me $60+, where it'd be around or even under $40 at the restaurant.
Therefore, I really don't understand the idea of take-out orders at decent dining spots. Why pay really nice money to pick up something at the door in Styrofoam, not as hot and fresh as possible to eat in your vehicle or take home and deal with the mess?
Yeah, I get that. I don't typically want takeout from "decent" places. Usually if it's takeout it's from a takeout joint.
However, the "mess" of a styrofoam container, even if you put it on a plate, is not exactly the same thing as the mess of cooking.
I think a lot of the people doing that might also have kids, too. If it's just my wife and I, the difference between getting takeout vs actually going to the restaurant is minimal. If it's us and the three children, it's a much bigger production to take them out. Granted, we typically just cook at home when we have them, but if we didn't cook so much I could see takeout as an option more often.
