Angry consumers confront 'checkflation', how a $25 chicken gets to cost $36, new crunchy stuff for your sandwich and watch your guasacaca.

Plus more: Sea-cuterie replaces butter boards; paying people to open cans of fish, what’s making Hong Kong restaurants sizzle? Omakase dinners of the cheap-ish, fried rice is a thing and loads of buzzwords.

And: Are 'American' restaurants becoming obsolete?

PICKING DINERS’ POCKETS: JUNK FEES & CHECKFLATION

There’s a growing consumer backlash to deceptive menu pricing … mostly practiced by independent restaurants. Junk charges at the bottom of your dinner check … for “service charge’ or “wellness surcharge” or “hospitality charge!” … has consumers confused and fuming.

While guilt-tripping their customers, that extra money often ends up in the operator’s pocket. These bottom-of-the-check fees lure people into ordering a $25 chicken dish and paying $36 for it later.

Here’s how it works: Menu price for the chicken = $25 + 20% “service charge” = $30 + your usual 20% tip = $36.

More if you factor in local taxes. If the chicken were truthfully priced at $30 on the menu, the total would be the same … but you’d know it up front. (See example, below of checkflation.)

Chain restaurants aren’t into this flimflamming because that could trigger class action suits. (Although Olive Garden in Times Square is adding a “suggested” surcharge, aimed no doubt at tourists.) Indeed, the Feds just included F&B junk
pricing in its investigation on hotels’ and airlines’ bills. California law bans these charges next year, but they’re figuring out how to enforce it.

(To be fair, many restaurants do distribute some or all of those charges to their staffs … and they say so at the bottom of the check … but lots more don’t. Either way, these add-ons still leave a sour taste at the end of the meal.)

One reason fees are proliferating: Cities and states are banning tip credits … that allow owners to pay low wages (like $2.13 an hour) and make up the difference with tips. Chicago did it along with California, Minnesota, Oregon and four others … more will follow. Tacking those rising labor costs to the bottom of the check allows restaurants to claim fallaciously “we haven’t raised our prices.” But it still is ”checkflation.”

Waiter: Are you enjoying your $20 omelet?
Customer: I’d like some bread or toast, please.
Waiter: We don’t serve bread. But I can bring our bread basket for an extra $10.

OMAKASE MEETS POCKETBOOK REALITIES

Tired of blowing next month’s car payment at a $500 or $1000-a-person sushi emporium? Look forward to omakase restaurants serving dinner for one-fifth of the price … a case where less-is-less may be good thing. A new breed of restaurants is scaling back the overwhelming number of courses to 10 or 12 … and mixing in lower cost handrolls to hold down prices and spruce up variety.

The idea is to maintain quality but speed seat turnover … so more customers make up for lower prices. It takes some e-searching but you’ll find them cropping up in Miami, Washington, the West Coast and New York. Meanwhile there are these cheaper deals …

Trendy new omakase experiments

Handroll Omakase: Sitting at a counter, you might get up to a dozen different handrolls. The Handroll Project in San Franciso offers five-, seven- and ten-piece sets.

The latter, at $95, includes A5 Wagyu, fish eggs and uni. Crispy Rice Omakase: Rectangles of sushi rice are crispy fried but warm and cuddly on the inside. They’re topped with raw fish, truffled beef, uni and other delectables. A five-piece assortment will set you back about $50 at Miami’s Miss Crispy Rice.

Chirashi: These are bowls or platters of raw fish over a bed of sushi rice. Essentially an omakase in a single package. Saves time and labor in not forming and draping individual sushi pieces. Especially appropriate for takeout or delivery.

WATCH YOUR GUASACACA.
VENEZUELAN FOOD MAY BE NEXT TASTE INFLUENCER

Because of the growing migrant crisis, nearly 500,000 escapees from Venezuela will be allowed to work in the US until the end of 2024. Of those taking jobs, probably half will be in the hospitality sector … so look for their ethnic foods and flavors to pop up in restaurant kitchens.

Better brush up on your guasacaca from Venezuela … a creamy green sauce of avocados, cilantro, parsley, chilipeppers, vinegar, (sometimes lime), garlic and olive oil. A bit thinner and more pungent than guacamole … great on grilled meats and fish, on egg dishes, and over vegetables. It is traditional in or over arepas (see photo, below) …which also will appear on more Latin-inflected menus.

HONG KONG-STYLE DINING AIMS FOR FUN AND NOSTALGIA

Old fashioned Hong Kong restaurants, with menus longer than your arm, are opening in North America with grand flourishes. Known as cha chaan tengs, they serve mashups of traditional Chinese café food along with dishes that were invented specifically for the Brits who had colonized Hong Kong for generations. Chaan tengs were early to the fusion game.

You’ll find scrambled eggs and hot dogs with macaroni in tomato sauce; cheeseburgers in pineapple buns; pork cutlet with cheese, tomato and peanut butter; Spam, egg and noodle soup; a bread bowl with chicken bolognese, and dizzying arrays of heaping sizzle platters.

It’s all very homey, fun and Instagram fodder. You might drop by for a snack or an entire dinner … finding it hard to spend twenty bucks … thirty if you’re in high splurge mode.

Read the full report here

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