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Editorial  |
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Staff Column
But not the fish and chips!
Ron J. Rambo Jr.
The Advocate
Despite the current economic turmoil happening throughout the United States, things aren’t all bad. Or, at least, they shouldn’t be as bad as people are making it.
Lately, yours truly has noticed much in the way of companies being total cheapskates, most notably when it comes to food.
For instance, while making a quick-fix dinner of Hamburger Helper earlier in the week, I noticed a small icon near the bottom of the box that read, “Now with a faster cooking time!” Having been a student of the art of culinary greatness for a great deal of the last decade (particularly with Hamburger Helper), I couldn’t help but wonder exactly how the cooking time was sped up.
Looking at the ingredients, there are only a few things that need to be cooked: The hamburger, which doesn’t come with the package so it can’t possibly be engineered to cook any faster; the “sauce,” which needs only to have liquid added to it and then boiled away to thicken; and finally the noodles. It is impossible to “speed up” the cooking time for noodles of a particular size and thickness, meaning one thing: The noodles are simply smaller, yet the price of the product continues to increase.
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General Mills isn’t the only corporation to do this. Several brands of cereal and frozen dinners seem to be decreasing in the slightest amounts so as to prevent any clear recognition of this phenomenon by the general public. Now, a favorite restaurant of yours truly has taken to this horrendous cheap-skating: the McMenamins chain.
Perhaps serious fans of food are the only ones to really see what McMenamins has done lately, but it really takes away from the general appeal. Never the cheapest restaurants with the highest quality of food, McMenamins restaurants are always fun places to hang out in mostly for the great atmosphere and good beer. It always seemed as though part of the abnormally inflated prices of the food was due in part to this very unique atmosphere, which was always okay with me. However, in keeping track with the number of menu changes that have been made over the last year or two (and there have been far too many price-revisions to not be aware of), I’ve noticed that the cost has begun to outweigh the increases of inflation, and worse yet, the quality of the food.
One of my favorite menu items that McMenamins has had since I started frequenting their establishments is the ale-battered fish n’ chips. For many years (or possibly since the item was first put on the menu), halibut, a very tasty and high-quality white fish, was used. Now, the McMenamins brothers have turned cheapskate and instead have started to use cod, a significantly less tasty creature.
Atrociously, at some McMenamins they still serve halibut, albeit at a rate of $5 more per plate. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Another favorite restaurant of mine, Acapulco, has undergone similar menu “enhancements” (there is nothing new and improved about these menus, despite what they may say) that has turned some of my favorite dishes into abominations.
Take for instance the “Sea of Cortez,” which featured six months ago a grilled halibut steak, shrimp brochette, and crab enchilada for the price around $14. Now, for the price of $16, the halibut has been replaced with salmon – a significantly less expensive fish – but the price has increased. This goes beyond inflation. This is cheapskatery.
It may seem simply as though the seafood seems to be an isolated incident, but this is not true at all. Earlier this week, my girlfriend and I went to Red Lobster and, in technical terms, pigged out. However, much of what was on their menu the last time I went (February of last year) was still there, exactly as it was before, with the same cost as before. A half-pound side of king crab costs $10.50 at a time when a pound at a grocery store is at least $13 in most cases; not a bad deal at all considering I’m being catered while eating it.
The point of this? Corporations: Stop taking advantage of Americans while they’re trying to enjoy themselves just because there is a financial “crisis” going on. The greed is outrageous!