Wine markup in restaurants

It's worth carrying the prices of a few commonly sold wines to use as a yardstick to see how much you are being fleeced. In the UK, Chateau Musar works well because it is fairly common on winelists and it's easy to find as most restaurants don;t ever carry more than one Lebanese wine. It's £12-16 in the shops so anywhere where it comes in for less than £35 in being sensible with the wine markup.

(PS was the Nero at ambient temperture or chilled, I'm of the opinion that it is a good red wine for chilling)

Lot's of places in the UK have these on as a cheap Italian and it's a bad sign when they come out at ambient temperature. I've never seen them served at ambient temp in Italy. As you can guess I'm quite a fan.

Now the markup on soft drinks in pubs, that's the real bastard.

200% seems reasnoble for a place that keeps an interesting and diverse cellar and knows how to treat the wine. One big problem is it's often difficult to divine this in advance as most restaurants don't publish their wine lists either outside or on their website.

For smaller establishments with smaller lest varied cellars 150% seems reasnoble.

Does the UK have the concept of the "designated driver"? US bars often give free soft drinks to a group's DD.

As for restaurants marking up the price of a bottle of wine to 2.5 or 3 times the retail price, to add insult to injury the restaurant probably bought the wine at wholesale rates that are lower than retail.

there is a restaurant in philadelphia famous for doing this. they would never charge more than 10 dollars over retail.

Still, most places charge about $2 for a shitty little glass of Coke which is about the equivalent of half of a can.

Ed, have found gumbo spices. You want?

One thing that disappoints me is that beer does not have the status as a drink to have with meals. One of the pleasures of travelling in Belgium is the range of beer and how acceptable it is to drink beer with an upscale meal. Of course there is a widely available diversity of beers and a culture of the craft of serving them.

Ally, next time you come to London we should eat in St John, even if only in the Bar. It is a worthwhile and rewarding experience.

I'm trying to think of places where they really push beer with upscale meals and there aren't many that I can think of. There are a few giant beer houses in DC that serve thousands of different types of beer, but the food, while good, is burgers and fries. Some ethnic restaurants will offer a few beers from the country of origin but really they like to push cocktails and wines and sakes (maybe because markup is better? I've never thought much about beer markup in restaurants or bars, because they don't seem unreasonably priced).

I actually almost just went onto Orbitz, btw, to price out a trip to London for this St John. I have thought a bit better of my initial idea to make the trip "next month" :)

I have to say though - at certain price points the mark-up on food is just as scandalous as that on booze, but I can't really expand on that what with it being my job etc.....

Ex-post with Ed - too true, it's rare to get a decent beer list at a full-on restaurant... I think SJ just do Adnams iirc

There's nothing like getting a job in the food industry to make you really lose your appetite for eating out.

OK SRSLY: Waht do u look like in a Sandbox?

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/84/251576929_f193a6ffd2.jpg?v=0

-- TOM. BOT. (tombo...), December 24th, 2006.

I think my post makes it pretty clear that I'm not saying "Duh, whoa, there's a markup!" but "Is this a normal amount of markup?" Which is a perfectly reasonable question, especially since, sorry, I don't dine regularly in restaurants where the cheapest glass is $10. But I've come to expect that sort of obnoxious, snotty response from both you and Ally. Maybe it's something you've honed and refined together.

fuck :(

Hell no. Although I had a candle in my rice pudding on my birthday this year. You can either do cake as an instead of or as well as dessert, up to you. Pick the right cake and it would be perfect as a petit four thing with coffee and a nice close to a meal. At the end of the day the restaurant is there to serve and they will deal with birthdays all the time. The chef, more than likely, has a thing he does for birthdays.

A few weeks ago we had a large group that included a bunch of Orthodox Jews. The OJ's brought their own hermetically sealed food that we had to heat up and serve. *That* wasn't a pain in the ass on a busy night during convention season.... I think we went with $15 a head on that one.

Time/money/location permitting, the best way to make a special request at a restaurant is to go in on a slow night and have dinner or drinks there and ask the bartender/server about it - they'll either have a suggestion or send you to the manager. People tend to be much nicer about things like this in person, and it's good to show that you're putting the time and effort into it.

This is true; even I wouldn't do that.

How good are you all at asking "How much is that?" when the server suggests something? I was sideswiped by a $38 glass of champagne the other night.

RE: Party wine, I think that at the very least the host shouldn't outright state they aren't going to serve your wine. Placing it towards the back of the queue in hopes it won't get that far is a bit manipulative but acceptable in a too-much-bevvy situation.

I am terrible at actually asking how much something is, I breathed some relief Christmas night when a friend asked the server how much the bottle that we eyed up (TRUE FACT: BECAUSE IT WAS PLACED ON OUR TABLE, I WILL ADMIT THIS BUT RESTAURANT IS CANNY IF THEY KNOW MY PREFS WITHOUT ME HAVING GONE THERE!!). It wasn't on the menu and I wasn't going to ask--thankfully, it was very reasonably priced.

jaq - would you by any chance know the name of the grilled fish large/zoo-like in-the-round place in scottsdale (?) that I ate at in the late '80s or very early '90s?

Gabbneb - Was it in the old town part of Scottsdale, or the newer part up north by the resorts?

Gabb, I think your place might have been the Famous Pacific Fish Company.

yes! thanks.

There was an excellent Italian place in Scottsdale (regular version) in some kind of a strip mall/office park type thing whose name I forget completely.

Vincent's on Camelback? (nee Vincent Guerithault on Camelback?) which is Provencal-Southwestern?

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/130/335967692_d3ca9ccb23_o.jpg

It sounds like somewhere I'd like too. We will be over at the end of January and will perhaps give it a go.

Jaq's not opening gift wine things is so true. If we're going to someone's house and have gift wine to bring, we'll usually bring slightly less gift wine for opening then and there. Of course, we might be invited back to drink the gift wine at another time, which is always nice.

The nicest sommelier I ever met worked (probably still works) at Le Crocodile, which is a lovely French restaurant in Vancouver. Mister Monkey took me there once when he had silly money, and we had just started going out together. We had the most romantic meal and drank a 1995 Chateau Beauregard, which was beautiful. We chatted pleasantly with the sommelier and asked him about Canadian wines. I told him I was going home soon and had read a magazine article about ice wine and asked him if he had any recommendations. He brought out a few dessert wine glasses and described some of the ice wines to me and let me taste them for free, which was lovely. Then we bought a Chateau Rieussec to finish off. Yum yum.

We went back to the same restaurant a couple of years later on holidays, and they remembered us. We got free armagnacs. Yum.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a0/Foghorn_Leghorn.png/200px-Foghorn_Leghorn.png

http://www.stjohnrestaurant.co.uk/

I can recommend this:

http://www.hgwines.co.uk/wines/red/?ID=81&StartRow=1

http://www.hgwines.co.uk/wines/red/?ID=87&StartRow=21