What is the difference in price between dining out and eating a comparable meal at home? Of course, it depends on whether you order alcohol in a big way.
Let's presume you go to a steak house versus eating a similar steak and sides at home. You order an 8 ounce filet, BP, salad, asparagus.
The Kroger near me has Filet on sale for $13 right now, the nearest butcher sells it for $33 a pound for choice and $38 for prime. Let's figure the butcher has meat closer to what a restaurant would have, perhaps dry aged, perhaps not. So, the steak costs $17 at home. My guess is it's $45 at a good steak house, probably with one side. Asparagus is going to run another $5 (it's often $10 but has enough for two). Asparagus at home will be $2 sometimes less. Baked potato is $1. So, about $20 at home versus $50 out, sound about right?
Wine prices out are at least 2x retail. A decent bottle out will be $60 anyway, versus more like $25 at home, so that is where the ding is. The up charge on wine is the same as the up charge on the meal. And of course we haven't included a tip and tax.
We used to go to the same steak house in Cincy most of the time, they had good seafood as well (Eddie Merlot's). I had a wine locker there that allowed me to stock at retail, so that really saved money (it was $200 a year though). We had the same two servers nearly every time we went and that made it very comfortable. They knew our tastes and could recommend specials we might like etc. I was happy for them to pull something out of my wine locker without having to choose.
It would still hit $100 an evening for two of us, easily, not counting wine (which I had paid for separately).
Oddly enough, I grilled two filets at home last night with BP and asparagus, the ones from Kroger. They were quite good. I'm using an electric grill which is all we can have, and it works surprisingly well. The wife had a small filet but didn't eat it all, and I didn't eat all mine either. I opened a bottle of Regusci merlot, my last one, they do nice work there but no longer sell outside the winery. I suspect a lot of the medium high end wines are going this route, they can sell their entire production directly by mail or club or on site.
No middleman.