In recent weeks I have observed how restaurants have been adapting to the new times making one or two decisions, most of them instantaneous: Raise prices and lower portions. The other day I was about to have a heart attack after seeing the bill at a family meal in a classic restaurant in an Empordà town that I will not reveal. I don’t want any unnecessary side effects. I can assure you of two things: prices have risen. This is scientifically demonstrable by looking at the chart. And two: I didn’t count the snails I ordered, but there were a few fewer than a year ago and two years ago. It happens with the snails and it happens with the squid rings that, depending on where you go to eat, they give them to you well cut to hide that there are less. They abound, have you noticed?, more legs/tentacles than normal. It doesn’t matter if it’s in Barcelona or Madrid or even Santander, according to what a gastronomic spy tells me.
One day, in another restaurant, I asked the longtime waitress about the small portion of squid that had been served to us. Was it a mistake perhaps? Was the cook clueless? Her response: “Order from above.” It is understood. Silence and gobble. I will not go on, because if I start writing about what is happening with mushrooms in this dry autumn of 2022, it is better not to go into the details of the new culinary paradigm: less for more.
It’s not all scares. At a dinner on Barcelona’s Avenida del Born on Tuesday night, the portions were substantial. Nothing to complain about. Full terrace.
The new paradigm affects food and something as close to ours as coffee, whose prices are on the way to reaching levels of Manhattan or Scandinavia in privileged neighborhoods of Spain. In the Recoletos neighborhood of Madrid, having a black coffee, normal, for less than two euros is almost impossible. Already, if it is ‘cappuccino’ or coffee with milk, the scare goes up to three euros. In the neighborhood of les Corts in Barcelona, Joan Gamper street, I paid 1.80 euros for an ‘espresso’. It’s something. They confessed to me that it was a ‘special blended from Guatemala’. The waiter said it in such a way, with a Buenos Aires accent, that I was about to pay triple.
Related news
The evolution of the price of coffee in the markets can justify such increases. Or not? In June 2019, 0.95 cents were paid for almost half a kilo of coffee (one American pound); A year ago it had risen to 1.21 and in July 2022 it achieved a record of 2.52 to drop in recent months to 1.77. A fall, as usually happens in so many products, with a null effect on the final consumer. The coffee, like a long string of food products, they are already living from the pandemic extraordinary volatility in its values.
From the seller’s point of view, if you want to keep the profit margins, nothing to object to their strategies. You are free to offer the trimmed legs of tails you want. Consumers will end up deciding. It is more than assured that any restaurant that has been able to resist maintaining prices without having to reduce quality and quantity will end up benefiting in the medium term. Loyalty is generated in complex situations. It happened with the pandemic and it will happen now. We live in a state of continual hope, waiting for the monetary vaccine that central banks are applying, via rise in interest rates, to control inflation, work. In the meantime? It is enough to adapt to the new scenario and whoever wants to pay more for less, is an option as valid as any.