It's not home cooking

A word or two about home-cooked food: if it’s not cooked at home, it’s not home cooking. So how can restaurants (a generous term for many cafeteria-style eateries) and pre-packaged food products advertise their good ol’ home-cooking and “tastes like home-made”?

I’m a decent cook. Not much variety, but what I do is usually serviceable for family and guests. Most of the women and some of the men I’ve ever known cooked well enough to keep their families happy. But the rare at-home chef or chefette who can produce restaurant-quality dishes probably already has a show on the Food Network.

If a restaurant really turns out “home-cooked favorites” why would I want to pay a large amount to eat there? I eat my favorite home-cooked stuff every day for a lot less cash. I go to a restaurant to enjoy cuisine I can’t prepare myself.

I like beef, and I can season and cook a decent roast. But the day will never come when my home-grilled steak is as flavorful as one from any steakhouse in town. Nothing that lives in the sea will ever taste as good coming from my kitchen as from the local mediocre Red Lobster, let alone an actual seafood restaurant.

I don’t want to make a little parchment bag to bake a fish, I can’t smoke ribs at home, and gourmet pastries are out of my league entirely. I go to restaurants so other people, who are trained in the culinary arts, can do those things for me. It doesn’t hurt, either, that someone else also does the dishes.

Don’t get me wrong: I like good home cooking. But if I invest time and not a few dollars in dinner out, it had better not taste like home cooking.