By: Matt Meltzer
Credit: Andrew Zimmer/Thrillist (Edited)
Spaghetti and meatballs. The wedge salad. A bottle of wine. You don't have to be a well-heeled foodie to know that you're overpaying for certain items on a restaurant's menu -- you just need to have bought groceries. Like once, ever. Truth be told, though, there's a whole host of other dishes that, while they might seem reasonably priced, are actually netting the restaurant big margins at your expense.
To discover the most overpriced, marked-up, sucker-bet foods at your favorite eatery, we talked to chefs and restaurant owners; under the cloak of anonymity, they shared the biggest wastes of money on the menu.
Credit: Flickr/Cognoscenti*
"Kobe" beef
Real, actual Kobe beef is made in Japan from cows that get daily spa treatments, full-body exfoliations, and consultations with a naturopath. Or something like that. "Some restaurants, however, are serving American-style 'Kobe,' calling it Japanese Kobe, and charging $35/oz for it," said one chef, adding that since there are no standards for an "American" version of the beef, there's also no value in "Kobe" hot dogs, hamburgers, Bolognese sauces, nachos, or anything else. Restaurants are basically using the term to mean "add eight dollars."
Credit: Dan Gentile/Thrillist
Spicy tuna roll
You know why they make that thing so damn spicy? The same reason cuisines from places with sub-standard refrigeration are often spicy: the meat is suspect. Not spoiled, necessarily, but as one owner told us, "I stay away from spicy tuna rolls because they're made with the leftover parts of the tuna and disguised with the spicy sauce."
Credit: Anthony Humphreys/Thrillist
Fried calamari
The squid-to-breading ratio here is only slightly better than the ratio of basketball-to-commercials during the last 30 seconds of an NBA game. "You're paying for pure breading," one chef/owner told us, "which usually falls off or is chewy."
Credit: Chona Kasinger/Thrillist
Truffles
The large majority of "truffle oil" has about as much actual truffle in it as there is lime juice in a can of Sprite. Pretty much every chef and owner we talked to agreed on this one, and many told us it's usually a chemically engineered imitation or a highly diluted extract, like vanilla. Even on the rare occasion when actual truffles are used, paying $58 to see some black flecks on your risotto is never worth it.
Credit: Dan Gentile/Thrillist
Bottled water
This is not as obvious as you might think. Sure, you're paying for something you get for free, but if you're one of those people who's like "I can't trust the tap water that's so gross" and/or European, ask your server about the restaurant's tap water before you order bottled. Most places now have advanced filtration systems and the taste/clarity of the water is almost indistinguishable from that $11 bottle of Voss.
Credit: Matt Meltzer/Thrillist
Any chicken entrée over $25
Unless that entrée is called "Chicken à la 20-Dollar Bill," you've just grossly overpaid. Chicken -- even those free-range, born-free, allowed-to-vote-in-local-elections birds -- rarely cost the restaurant more than a few dollars per pound, one owner told us. He added for reference, "the cheese in your chicken quesadilla typically costs more."
More from Thrillist:
Like Thrillist on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Thrillist
Also on HuffPost:
