Eating Out & Eating In : The Difference

Steaks are something I leave to restaurants. It's a fairly simple thing to cook, but to get it just right requires a professional kitchen. On the other hand, simple Italian food, Lasagne for example, is more often than not tastier when you've made it yourself. In essence, then there are two types of food, stuff that restaurants are good at and things that are better to do yourself (although there's definitely some overlap and it suggests a third option — food that neither do well).

Jay Rayner in the Guardian seems to agree with me. His eating out experiences look to be far fancier than mine, but he recognises a number of foods that restaurants don't do well. Roast chicken is his main contention and he seems to make a perfectly valid point, in fact he thinks roasting, in general, is better in privacy if your own home simply because a good roast takes time. He also adds the following:

I also can't recall finding any restaurant which can do a roast potato well. They are always underdone, floury on the inside, lacking crispy chewy bits on the outside. Unlike mine, natch.

What else? Sausages, weirdly, are rarely good. Or at least, rarely as good as the domestic variety. There's always the suspicion they have been pre-cooked and are being reheated on service. A proper bacon sandwich is probably more likely to be found in your kitchen than theirs. And I always hesitate before ordering a crumble. Few crumbles - apple, blackcurrant, pear, you name it - can ever bear comparison to the one you eat at home over Sunday lunch.