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| Which one looks tastier? nowtravelasia.com |
Everybody wants to try a lobster. Why? Because it is considered to be luxurious and puts a dent in anyone’s wallet. But is this necessary? Maybe, as lobster farming is said to be difficult and the market relies on lobsters caught in the wild (and their transport is quite problematic as well). But even when the price goes down at the docks, the prices we pay in restaurants stay high. Why is that? Because many studies show that people get more pleasure in eating expensive food.
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| pinterest.com |
Research
led by Professor Brian Wansink of Cornell University was presented in 2014:
increasing the price of food can result in raising consumer liking by 11%. 139
diners were presented an all-you-can-eat buffet in an upscale Italian
restaurant in New York priced $4 or $8. They were asked to evaluate their
experience on a nine-point scale. Customers who paid more were overall more enjoying
the food, felt less guilty, bloated or overeaten even though they ate
comparable amount of food to the customers who paid less.
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| thedivaofdating.com |
“We were
fascinated to find that pricing has little impact on how much one eats, but a
huge impact on how you interpret the experience,” said Wansink. “Simply cutting
the price of food at a restaurant dramatically affects how customers evaluate
and appreciate the food.”
“If the food is
there, you are going to eat it, but the pricing very much affects how you are
going to feel about your meal and how you will evaluate the restaurant,” said
Ozge Sigirci, a researcher at the study.
This research is
not based on very objective material, so many of you may not consider it valid.
However, I have found another research by H.
Plassmann, J. O’Doherty, B. Shiv and A. Rangel:
this time about wine tasting. In the study people were told that they were
tasting both cheap and expensive wines while in fact they were tasting average
wines. The subjects were scanned using MRI and the research showed a higher
activity in medial orbitofrontal cortex - an area that shows experienced
pleasantness during experimental tasks - while tasting the “more expensive”
wines. Simply put, the participants were enjoying wine more when they believed
that it was expensive.
“Expecting
something to taste good, perhaps under the influence of a higher price, might
make it taste better than if there were no expectations,” says Daniel R. Hawes,
a social psychologist.
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| winefolly.com |
Do you think
that such experiments are scientifically valid and accurate?
I would like to
present to you some of the most expensive food in the world. Would you like to
try any of these? Or do you consider it too snobbish and value your moral
principles too much?
1. A beef steak aged for 15 years - $3200
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| mentalfloss.com |
2. Douche Burger - $666
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3. Frrrozen Haute Chocolate -
$25000
It is ice
cream sundae made from a blend of 28 cocoas and edible gold. It also contains a
golden bracelet with diamonds (at the bottom of the dessert) and is served with
a golden spoon decorated with diamonds. After eating it at Serendipity 3, New
York, you may take the bracelet and the spoon with you.
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| aufeminin.com |
4. Samundari Khazana Curry - $3200
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| cimcontent.net |
5. Pizza Royale 007 - $4200
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| alux.com |
6. Yubari King Melons - $23000 per fruit and Densuke Black Watermelon - $6100
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| tokyotimes.com |
7. Italian White Alba Truffle - $160406
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| therichestimages.com |
Would you agree
that the price of food may influence one’s perception of its taste?
Sources:
Comments
It is very interesting topic. I still think that I'm not a man who like expensive pleasure, but although when I buy something which is expensive I feel better. It might be like with eating.
Prices of these foods are impressive.
I like the Frrrozen Haute Chocolate for $25000
Gold which we can eat is very interesting. I have never heard before about it. It seems to be totally luxury "food"
It is rather funny, but I believe that we are so primitive and price can influence for us and our perception of taste.
In my opinion there is some truth about what you said, but also I can't 100% agree :) Of course, basing on psychology and marketing, we can say that raising prices can give us a feel of more sophisticated and luxury experience. And people like to feel this luxury, but not always. Sometimes you just need to eat something that's good and cheap and knowing place like this is a treasure – there are not many places like that. Maybe because once you're good you don't want to be cheap anymore ;)
Paying such a ridiculous prices for food sounds like a big waste of money to me, but we all know that there are a few people that need that kind of places and things to spend their money on :PP to brag on Instagram, tell friends or just have a pleasure of spending $25000 on ice cream xD
One of the World's Most Expensive Restaurants, Ultra Violet, in Shanghai, China, serves 10 Guests a night and charges at least $1,000+ per person for a 23 course meal. They whole room changes with each meal. Check their promotional video here and some youtuber's review here
I had a chance to eat at Atelier Amaro in Warsaw which is the first restaurant in Poland to have a Michelin Star and I have to admit, it was totally worth the money. The whole experience and the "show" around the food was amazing and even though I'm a picky eater I tried everything and the tastes were very surprising and great. I can write more about specific dishes if anyone is interested.
To be honest most of the times I don't find expensive dishes worth the price and I usually leave a little disappointed. It's more about the way it's serve and not how it tastes.
On the other hand when you get a cheap meal you can't really count on good quality, so usually it's about finding the *right* restaurant, the one that serves te kind of food that suits you.
I understand that all of us are interesting in trying new things and different cultures, but those dishes are absolutely not worth such price. I am always trying to evaluate what is the cost of making or producing a product and compare to price of the seller.
I may compare those dishes to computer hardware, I can either pay for PC that cost a lot and have shitty RAM, disc and processor or I can build my PC from pieces that I will choose and it will be 100-times better and cheaper.
For example, same wine was poured into a nicely designed bottle with a well-designed label and a cheap-looking one with plastic cork. I knew the psychological effect would work on "normal" people, but I didn't expect it would be so with experts - they claimed they can feel 'flowery boquets' etc. in the 'expensive' wine. It's a bit frightening - what if their judgements are affected by the bottle's look when they evaluate wine in some contests, etc.?
In my opinion the best, the cheapest and the most comforting food is the one made at home. Some people say that life is too short to eat cheap fastfood. What do you think about that? Do you have any treasure places for a good, cheap and fast meal that you could recommend?
There is also another unusual food related thing that I've heard about and always wanted to try - it is a restaurant that serves food in complete darkness. Generally people appreciate the look of their meal first and build their opinion on this but in this case you must rely solely on your taste, touch and smell and I think this is fantastic. What is your opinion on this kind of restaurant?
The other type of restaurant is a place in Los Angeles called n/neka. They don't have a menu - when you make a reservation they ask you what would you like to eat and prepare a 9 (I think) course meal for you based on your preferences. Regardless of the price of such experience ($700 or so), would you like to try it?
Do you recommend any cool Warsaw restaurants that are somewhere in between the price range?
However I have heard that people enjoy the food made for them by someone else more than the food they make themselves. It doesn't matter that they haven't spent any time preparing it, it just tastes better for them. Have you ever noticed anything like that? Do you agree?
Maybe this is because we belittle ourselves and think that ok, this 80 zł soup was not so good, but if it is that expensive, the cook must know what he/she is doing? I think that when it comes to expensive food, we can't accept the fact that it may be not done properly, we just presume that it didn't match our taste and we blame ourselves for that. Recently I have eaten in the Ramen Girl (now closed). It was a three course Restaurant Week meal and I was so psyched about it. I've heard so much about the great Luiza Trisno who was a chef there. Ramen was perfect, I must say, but the rest... average or even below. I was so disappointed, but I thought that maybe I just cannot appreciate it because most of the things there were new to me. But then I thought about it and I figured that I could cook better things than served there and stopped blaming myself.
To be honest I had opportunity to try restaurants from many price ranges, and it never felt like price matters. Of course if something was too expensive or too cheap I usually get suspicious and am getting more critical. Also I can give examples of expensive as well as cheap restaurants that knock your socks off. I am quite a fan of Indian food, and Curry House in Warsaw is one of the best restaurants I ate. It is above average student price but once in a while it is nice place to visit. On the other hand, when I was on exchange in Korea I loved "Kimbab heaven" where you could eat nice meal for less than 10 polish zlotys. Amazing how creative people can get with simplest ingredients.
I think in my case the price doesn't affect me as much as the restaurant's and the dishes' looks. Although I've eaten fantastic food from some hole-in-the-wall places, I'm definitely more likely to avoid places which don't look like they have many customers or look shabby. If I'm to go to a shabby looking place, I have to get a really good recommendation. There's a great... hut, I think, in Wałbrzyska Market, which sells Argenitinian/Chilean food, mostly sandwiches. It's in the middle of an old, typical Polish market, but the food is great and inexpensive. You can check it out here.
I must say the examples of expensive food you've given are impressive! Some of them seem like they're made just for show, though; just to show that, yes, we threw the most expensive ingredients together because we can. They might not even taste good (in the sense that the flavours migh overwhelm each other). The same goes for the clientele of such restaurants; they go there to brag. Sorry, my cynicism took over for a moment ;) I'm sure most of them are definitely worth trying and maybe even worth their price.
It's funny that most of the food we consider luxurious these days was once peasant/poor people's food and deemed absolutely plain, just like Marcin mentioned about the lobster. Also, it's interesting to think about food demographically, so to say. Rich white people in America (and probably in Europe too, though to a slightly lesser extent) ate food prepared for them by slaves/servants: poor people, usually of different ethnicity. They were the ones who probably invented the most dishes and basically created the whole food culture.
Oh wow, exchange in Korea must have been a cool experience, I have recently done some reading on Korean food. Which was your favourite?
And thanks for your recommendation, I will definitely check this Wałbrzyska market food!
Speaking of hole-in-the-wall places - I have recently been to Naples and ate the best pizza in my life, twice. The first time was in a dodgy suburban district where we arrived at 22:30 and everything was closed except for the shabbiest restaurant I have ever been to. Plates and cuttlery were dirty, nobody spoke any language but italian and I think we got plastic cups for the wine we ordered. But the pizza... oh my God, it was heavenly. Usually I eat at recommended places but we had no other choice and I am glad we didn't. The other place was a hard choice between 3 Sorbillo pizzerias - Sorbillo family had an argument that led to opening three different restaurants next to each other! Two of them had managers, white tablecloths and life music and the third one was, I think, the original hole in the wall with 5 seats inside, right next to the pizza oven. If you ever go to Naples, it is a MUST.
Putting your cynicism aside, would you like to try any of these expensive products?;)
Hahah, yeah, cynicism aside, I would try all of them and probably gush over how good they are :D
I can’t say much about wine because I only drink at least 5 year old whiskey.
Regarding trying new cusisines, special tastes and new flavours, I like it :) Everytime I travel, I try something local and popular or not so common, as long as it's something desired in this place, so I can have my own opinion.
What is your most unusual food experience that you had during your travels?
Anyway, It is a really interesting topic, so thank you.