Restaurants are filling seats and keeping cash flowing by offering good value early-bird and pre-theatre menus, writes CLAIRE O'MAHONY
AS WITH PRACTICALLY everything else, our recession without end has dramatically changed the way most of us go out to eat. Back in the good old days when we had money (or thought we had), a lot of us seemed quite happy to drop €100 on a midweek meal for two in a new restaurant on occasions that weren’t in any way special.
How many of us would be prepared to do that now? Not too many, we suspect. What people want from restaurants is good food at the best possible price. Informed foodies will say that the best value in the country is lunch in high-end restaurants. At Michelin-starred places, such as Chapter One and Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud in Dublin, a two-course lunch will cost you €29 and €36 respectively.
But the days of long lazy (and possibly boozy) lunches have gone the way of the Celtic Tiger, and people who can’t afford, or are not allowed, to take two hours out of a working day are increasingly looking to early-bird menus to fulfil their expectations. More restaurants are now offering early birds as well as “all-evening” early birds or pre-theatre menus, which are set menus that generally run all week, although many restaurants will not offer them on a Saturday.
A search through MenuPages.ie brings up almost 100 establishments offering early-bird and pre-theatre offerings, and that’s in the Dublin area alone. What is on offer varies considerably. Where one restaurant might be offering two courses for €20, another will be selling four courses with tea/coffee and a glass of wine thrown in for the same price. It’s always worth remembering, though, that when it comes to food, quantity and a cheap price is not the same as value for money.
While they’re benefiting financially, the obvious compromise for diners is that they’re choosing from a limited menu and they’re unlikely to be dining on lobster or fillet steak unless they pay the fairly hefty supplements, which kind of defeats the purpose. Diners also have to eat during an allotted time period and can’t linger in the restaurant all night. And there’s always the slight suspicion that you mightn’t be treated with the same TLC as someone dining off the á la carte.
Do early birds always represent the best value for money? Not necessarily, says Peter McGuire of Cheapeats.ie, the entertainingly frugal food blog. “I’ve seen several set menus where diners would be better off ordering the same ingredients from the á la carte. Also, just because a place offers food for less than it usually costs, that does not mean it is better value for money than a cheaper restaurant down the road without a set menu or early bird.”
There are a few things to look out for, he warns, such as very restrictive time slots and supplements on just about everything you’d typically want to eat, including steak and sides dishes.
Value depends entirely on the establishment, according to food writer Georgina Campbell. “There are a few, very exceptional ones and one of them is Thorntons [at the Fitzwilliam Hotel, Dublin]. The €47 pre-theatre menu there is extremely good value,” she says. “In that case, what you’re looking at is the cooking of an exceptional chef, and even if the dishes aren’t the same and the atmosphere isn’t the same as later on, you are still getting that great-quality product, the same buying policy in terms of ingredients, the same philosophy of food and the same attention to detail. There’s no way an owner-chef of that calibre is going to damage his brand by selling off something inferior at an earlier hour.”
At Fallon & Byrne’s restaurant on Dublin’s Exchequer Steet, the three-course pre-theatre menu costs €28.80 and includes a main-course option of aged Irish rib-eye steak with béarnaise sauce and fries, which costs €22.10 on the á la carte menu. Owner Fiona McHugh says that while the restaurant takes a smaller margin on its pre-theatre menu, this is preferable to having a half-full dining room.
“From our perspective, if you’re choosing between having a small amount of people in the restaurant buying more expensive dishes, it’s better to fill the restaurant and make less on the food, but hopefully the people dining will have wine and extras,” she says. “But even from a morale point of view, overall you’d rather have a full restaurant even if you’re not making the same kind of money, because staff will make tips and it lends atmosphere to the whole building.” But even if customers are availing of seemingly amazing deals, it’s hardly a goodwill gesture from the restaurant. Galway-based hospitality consultant Geoff Kinsella agrees that occupancy is what feeds the buzz in a restaurant.
“Nobody likes to go into an empty space,” he says. “It’s a viable commercial approach because you’re not dispersing any other higher-spend business. People typically don’t start to book dinner in Ireland until after 8pm. If you can get people to come in from between 6pm and 8pm, they’re not taking up seats that would have been otherwise occupied. You’re taking an available resource, selling cost-price food to them and then you can challenge and motivate your staff to deliver and up-sell things like coffee and wine.”
Another way early birds mutually benefit owner and eater alike is that the latter gets to try somewhere new without making too much of a financial commitment and, from the restaurant’s perspective, if you go for an early bird on Tuesday night and are impressed, you might well come back another time. Early birds are a future investment for restaurants.
Online coupon schemes, such as LivingSocial and Groupon/City Deals, which regularly offer restaurant deals, are also helping people to eat out for less.
For regular user Liz Fitzgerald, 21st-century couponing has encouraged her to try new places that would have previously slipped under her radar. Has she ever felt she was treated differently because she presented a coupon?
“In general, my experience to date as a customer has been very good, but there was one occasion in a certain restaurant where I was served chicken that wasn’t cooked properly,” she says. “They were very apologetic and offered to comp us the meal, but I did wonder if this would have happened if I was a normal customer paying the full price.”
While she’s never felt awkward turning up at a restaurant with a coupon in hand, she does feel that certain situations preclude it. “If I was going on a first date, I don’t think I’d use them as it might look a bit cheap,” she says.
Not that there’s any shame in eating on the cheap; in fact, quite the opposite. “We’ve gone from being a society where we talked about the lovely places we’ve been to and where we didn’t discuss price. Now people recognise that €20 is one thing, but great value and quality at €20 is something they can really talk about to their friends,” says Geoff Kinsella.
Maguire agrees. “I don’t know if there ever was any such shame in it, but frugality is definitely more fashionable again, unlike the boom years where ostentation was encouraged,” he says.
“People definitely expect value for money and restaurants can’t get away with bad food or service any more. A bad experience is quite likely to be shared with a person’s 300 Facebook friends, or plastered over their blog, or posted on MenuPages.”
SUCCESSFUL EARLY BIRD DINING THE RULES
Do the maths. It's fairly obvious, but anything not included on the menu, such as teas, coffees, water or wine is going to increase your bill, often substantially.
The same goes for supplements. Cheeseboards and steaks are the dishes most likely to carry them. Going off the set menu will cost.
Don't outstay your welcome. The unspoken understanding is that an early-bird booking reserves your table for two hours.
If you're going to the theatre, book your pre-theatre meal as early as you can. Starting time for most theatre is 7.30pm, which could put you under pressure.
