Sometime around the middle of last year, I picked up takeaway dinner at one of my favourite local restaurants.
It’s a brilliant hidden gem Sri Lankan place in Dulwich Hill in Sydney’s inner west called … OK fine, it’s called The Fold and RIP to my ‘hidden’ gem I guess.
Anyway, when Dikli, the restaurant’s co-owner tallied up my order and told me the price my jaw dropped. It was far less than I was expecting. Because the food at this place is spectacular.
Their layered, savoury upcountry chicken curry – made with free-range chicken – is my happiest place.
Their appa is a meal in itself – an egg hopper, two plain hoppers, spicy lunu miris condiment and two sambols.
And their cakes. The couple who make The Fold’s spice-scented, chocolatey luxury cakes also do pastry work at Sixpenny and Franca Brasserie, which should give you some idea of how special they are.
But just as wonderful is the atmosphere. The whole restaurant is family-run. It’s welcoming and warmly lit.
Dikli is always happy to have a chat or explain any dishes that might need some clarification.
It’s not fancy or fussy. It’s just great.
And my meal for two – two curries, the appa and an entree – came to a grand total of $79 “You should raise your prices!”
I cried as I tapped my card. “You guys are worth more than this!”
Dikli smiled and admitted that they hadn’t raised their prices since they opened in 2020 – and we were well into The Inflation Times by this point – but her expression made me think she’d put some thought into the matter.
Don’t panic – I don’t make a habit of going around telling restaurants to become more expensive, but my point is when it comes to eateries and their prices I have developed an excellent internal barometer of satisfaction.
If you make me feel good then you can take my money. Not everyone feels the same, however. There’s a lot of debate at the moment about how much is too much for pay for restaurant food.
This weekend, The Daily Telegraph ran a piece asking “Is this Australia’s most expensive manoush?” and pointed an appalled finger at the manoush being sold at the newly-opened Beau & Dough in Sydney’s Surry Hills, which starts at $10 for the signature za’atar version and climbs to $28 if you add sujuk sausage, egg and cheese.
And earlier, a whole host of news outlets got equally up in arms over the price of two Jatz crackers topped with smoked butter and an anchovy at another inner-city Sydney dazzler, Kiln, which cost $10 for two.
Here’s the thing, though. Both those dishes are really, really good. Really good. They are both excellent things to eat, served in really great spaces.
So, can we just eat them and enjoy them without having a cry about it? (And before you ask, yes you could buy the Jatz crackers yourself. No, you could not smoke butter in coals like Kiln’s chef Mitch Orr does, at least not without a hell of a lot of fuss and fluster).
When I visited Beau & Dough a few days after opening, a staff member welcomed me at the door, handed a menu to me directly and then happily chatted to me about the choices when she could see I looked a little overwhelmed.
I decided on one of Chef Ibrahim Kasif’s beautiful manoushes, topped with a soft quilt of spiced lamb, and then I waited in the pretty sky-blue space, enjoying watching the chefs work in the open-plan kitchen and checking out the range of cool condiments on display – a hot sauce, a garlic oil collab with a South Australian olive oil producer.
Then I took my big manoush and I scoffed the lot in a park in the sunshine. Every bit of that interaction was a truly enjoyable part of my day.
You can go into the finer details of the real costs of what goes into a dish like Beau’s manoush – as Beau’s restaurateur Jacqui Challinor pointed out on a podcast a few days later.
There’s staffing, there’s insurance, there’s rent on the premises, there’s things most diners would never think about like pest control.
That’s all very true, but what I really care about when I open my wallet to pay for food is hunting down that warm, soft glow of pleasure. Simple as that.
Of course the opposite can be true. I’ll resent paying even five bucks for a lacklustre sandwich.
And I do understand when diners get snippy over cheat-y add-ons, like a miserly dandruff of truffle adding $40 to their bill but very little to their experience.
But if you walk away from a restaurant feeling like you had a good time? Then hey. You walk away from that restaurant feeling like you had a good time. Isn’t that what life’s meant to be about?
Can we stop nitpicking over face-value prices when it comes to our restaurants and focus on real value?
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It’s easy. Keep going back to the places you know make you feel good, relax and enjoy yourself.
Except please don’t flood my Dulwich Hill Sri Lankan – that’s my little secret.
This article originally appeared on Escape and was reproduced with permission
