Miami has never been a hotbed for delicious food. But we had our spots where you could fill your belly without breaking the bank.
Then sometime during the pandemic, local restaurants went down the gutter. A couple of good ones went out of business during the shutdown. But the ones that managed to stay alive, seeming unanimously decided to band together and lower their quality and quantity while increasing prices.
It’s almost like all South Florida restaurant owners got together and took the opening monologue Woody Allen gave in Annie Hall to heart when he says to the camera, “Two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of ’em says: ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other says, ‘Yeah, I know, and such … small portions.'”
Sure these are inflationary times. Rent is sky high, ingredient prices have gone up and so have wages (oh yeah not wages since somehow in Florida restaurants get away with paying tipped employees much less than McDonald’s or WalMart has to pay their workers), but man why did all local restaurants have to decide they want to treat diners like they need to go on a crash diet?
I get I sound like a bitter old man who can’t get used to these times where you’re supposed to bring a sandwich with you to a restaurant if you want to go home satiated, but back in my day, sonny, Italian restaurants would serve complimentary bread before meals while you scoured their menu.
Mexican restaurants would reward you with chips and salsa on the house.
Even delis would serve up a free basket of prune Danishes before you got to the business of chowing down breakfast. Sadly those days are gone.
And don’t get me started on food trucks.
