Kramer’s Korner: Amarillo Restaurants Raising Prices, Sacrificing Quality

Look, it's not a secret that the price of food continues to rise. You go in the grocery store and items are 50% higher than they were a few months ago. Some fluctuate over time, like eggs. I mean those were like $5 for a dozen for a bit, but they've settled down.

Those food prices have carried over to restaurants, and I can completely understand that. I don't have a problem with paying a bit more at a restaurant because of the food price problem, but I don't expect the quality to suffer.

The family and I went out to dinner last night since we don't seem to go very often these days. We picked a decent restaurant, one that is typically known for having good food all the way around. No, I'm not going to say exactly WHERE we went.

This particular place on this occasion didn't just come with some food issues, they came with service issues as well.

We got seated, then waited a good 10 minutes for a server to even show up. The place was NOT busy in the slightest, most people were up at the bar truthfully. I can understand having to wait if they're slammed and understaffed. This was not the case.

We finally get our drink order put in and I decide to order a couple of appetizers at the same time afraid we weren't going to see the server for a bit.

Drinks arrive, then shortly after that the apps hit the table. I will say that the appetizers were pretty solid, so no complaints there. We place our order for dinner when they drop those off, then we wait.

Our food comes out and I take a bite of my burger. Talk about instant disappointment. The burger is overcooked, there's barely ANY mushrooms on my mushroom swiss burger, and it's just lacking flavor in general.

I eat a couple of the fries on my plate and decide I'm done eating those. Flavorless and didn't even seem like they were cooked all the way through. I could've sent it back, but what for? I just wasn't in the mood.

When the bill comes out, it's just shy of $100, and I felt like I had been taken to the cleaners between the food and the service. This isn't the first time in the last few months that I've paid good money for a meal and it was just mediocre at a restaurant that's usually pretty good.

Long story short? If you have to charge more for my food, that's fine. Just make sure you aren't sacrificing the quality of it, otherwise you're going to be charging $20+ for a burger and no one is going to come in.