One in six hospitality businesses is said to be at risk, a restaurant meal is beyond most budgets, and there is a way to square the two that mostly involves Tuesdays

Eating Out on a Budget in London

I have a rule about restaurants. I am allowed one meal out a fortnight. It must cost fifteen pounds or less, including something to drink. And it has to be somewhere I would be sad to see close.

The third part is new. I added it in the summer, after the Vietnamese place on the corner of my road shut without warning. I had been meaning to go for months.

The State of Things

It was not an isolated case. A business bulletin in July reported that hospitality bodies were warning one in six businesses could close within a year without urgent support. They were asking for a cut in VAT.

A later bulletin, at the start of October, put a number on the jobs. Hospitality employment has fallen by 93,000 over two years, according to the trade bodies.

The reasons are the ones you would guess. Wages, energy, rent and ingredients have all gone up. And customers have less money.

I am one of those customers. That is the uncomfortable bit. The restaurants are closing partly because people like me have stopped going. We have stopped going because we cannot afford it. Nobody in this story is the villain.

What a Meal Costs Now

A main course in an ordinary neighbourhood restaurant in my part of London is now sixteen to twenty pounds. Add a drink, a shared starter and the service charge, and you are at thirty-five a head without trying.

Two of those a month would be most of what I put aside for a deposit.

So for a long time I simply did not go. I cooked. I became very good at lentils. And one by one the places I liked disappeared.

The Fifteen-Pound Meal

Then I worked out that there is a second price list, and almost nobody uses it.

Restaurants are full on Friday and Saturday nights. They are empty at lunchtime on a Tuesday. But the rent, the rates and the chef’s wages are the same on both days. An empty table at Tuesday lunch earns nothing. So a great many places will sell you that table very cheaply.

Here is what I have found within a bus ride of Leyton.

The set lunch. A Turkish grill on the high road does a lunch plate, with bread, salad and tea, for eleven pounds. In the evening the same lamb is nineteen.

The early bird. An Italian place in Walthamstow does two courses for fourteen pounds if you order before half past six.

The quiet-night offer. A curry house near the station does a set meal on Mondays and Tuesdays for thirteen. They told me those two nights used to be dead.

The cafe that does dinner. A Polish cafe near the market serves a plate of dumplings and a bowl of soup for ten pounds, any time.

The canteen. Several of the Vietnamese places on Kingsland Road will sell you a bowl of noodle soup the size of a washing-up bowl for twelve.

None of these is a compromise. It is the same kitchen and the same cook. You are just eating when they need you.

Why This Helps Them

I asked the owner of the Italian place whether fourteen-pound customers were any use to her. I expected to be told politely that they were not.

She said the opposite. The early sitting covers the staff she has to pay anyway. It means the room looks alive when the later, full-price customers arrive, and nobody wants to eat in an empty restaurant. Some of the early birds come back on a Saturday for a birthday.

She said, “A busy Tuesday is what pays the gas. Saturday is the profit.”

So the cheap meal is not charity on her part or meanness on mine. It is the thing that keeps the lights on between weekends.

How to Be a Good Cheap Customer

There are ways to do this that help and ways that do not.

Book directly. Ring or use the restaurant’s own site. The apps take a cut of the bill, and on a fourteen-pound meal that cut is the whole margin.

Turn up. A no-show on a small restaurant’s quiet night is a real loss. If you cannot go, tell them.

Have the tap water without embarrassment, but if you are going to have one drink, have it. Drinks are where a restaurant makes its money. A four-pound glass of wine does more for them than the food.

Tip in cash if you can. Even a pound or two. It goes to the person who served you.

Do not linger for three hours over a single course at a table they could turn. On a quiet night, though, nobody minds.

And tell people. A review, a message to a friend. A small place has no advertising budget.

The Bigger Argument

The trade wants the government to cut VAT on meals. I can see why. A fifth of what I pay goes in tax, and supermarkets pay none on most of the food they sell me to cook at home.

I can also see the objection. The Chancellor has very little money and a cut would cost billions. It would benefit large chains as well as the Italian place. And there is no guarantee it would reach my bill.

I do not know which side is right. I notice that neither would bring back the Vietnamese place on my corner.

What might have saved it is forty more people going on a Tuesday. That I can do something about.

The Fortnightly Meal

Last night was my night. The Turkish grill. Lamb, bread, salad, a glass of the yoghurt drink, tea. Thirteen pounds fifty with a pound on the plate.

There were six other people in at one o’clock. The owner was doing the till, the grill and the tables. He recognised me, which pleased me more than it should.

I asked how things were. He made the face. Then he said, “Lunch is better. People have found the lunch.”

Find the lunch. It is the best advice I have for anyone trying to live in this city on not enough, and I think it may be the best advice for the city too.

The London Prat has dined out on a budget since rationing and reports in its UK satirical news on eating out on a Tuesday and its British satirical news about the set lunch. Bohiney Magazine covers a country where the portion is the size of the table and the tip is compulsory.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/