From a £28 sandwich to £37 for fish and chips – what are you really getting for your money?

As someone who frequents restaurants more than the average Briton, I’ve found myself baffled over the last few years by how expensive things have become during the cost of living crisis.

We might have all tightened our belts over the past year, but as the latest edition of Harden’s London Restaurants finds 54 venues in the city where a couple could expect to receive a bill of £300 or more, it hasn’t stopped fine dining restaurants upping their prices to dizzying heights – or punters paying for it.

Perhaps we’re still riding the “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone” wave out of the pandemic. Perhaps surging prices and an acceptance of our new, make every penny count reality have created more of an occasion out of dining out. When I’ve been lucky enough to eat at the highest ends of fine dining, I’ve asked the chef: “How is it still so busy?” The response is usually that the most expensive restaurants never really took the hit. Or rather, the cohort of people able to afford eye-watering bills didn’t.

Other conversations have leaned more towards value for money – a desire to ensure that if you are forking out, you might get less on your plate but it will all be quality stuff, from great ingredients to excellent vibes.

Chefs seem to have predominantly risen to this new way of spending by elevating the ordinary, not always with success, mind you. Jay Rayner once wrote that the mark of a country’s food culture doesn’t lie in the opening of a fancy new restaurant doing interesting things with pig trotters; it lies in the availability of really good sandwiches at fair prices. In which case, what does Pret charging customers £7.15 for a “Posh Cheddar and Pickle” baguette say about the state of food in this country? Sandwiches are where Britons draw the line.

Or perhaps they draw it at fish and chips. Rick Stein charging an extra £2 for curry sauce sent Padstow penny pinchers into a frenzy, but when Tom Kerridge debuted his £37 day-boat turbot, hand-cut chips and homemade Matson curry sauce (also at Harrods), we all just laughed. That’s not to mention the people swapping their £1 packet of penne for a £22 two-portion bag of smoked tagliatelle, courtesy of Spanish Michelin-starred chef Albert Adria.

So, why are these things so expensive and what exactly are you getting for your money? Here goes…

Big cheese: Pret’s £7.15 Posh Cheddar and Pickle baguette

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It seems fitting to start this lineup with the least expensive item, though by no means the least offensive.

Pret A Manger punters were dumbstruck in September when they ventured into the High Street Kensington station branch in search of a quick (sub-par, overpriced) lunch and were met with a £7.15 Posh Cheddar and Pickle baguette. If you take it to go, it’s only £5.95, and only £4.99 in any of the other 450 Prets around the country, the sandwich chain reasoned.

They added that prices were “typically higher at train stations, due to higher operational costs”, and, “like all businesses, we are facing intense cost pressure, which we are trying to absorb as much as possible”.

If it’s a case of what they said and what they meant, the latter is there’s nothing “posh” about this sandwich nor its ingredients other than its postcode. Really, you’re paying for their rent and energy bills. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Before the debacle, the FT published a graph-heavy investigation into whether this explanation washed and found that Pretflation was 50-75 per cent on pre-pandemic levels, compared to actual inflation of 20 per cent.

So, if you’d like to absorb as little of their costs as possible, might I suggest you march 10 paces left of the offending Pret into the neighbouring M&S? There, you can buy all the ingredients you need for a posh cheddar and pickle baguette for the sum of £12.72, which will make just over five sandwiches at around £2.50 a pop.

You’ve got to give it to Pret: nowhere else has quite as successfully pulled off selling convenience at this markup. I didn’t need any more reasons not to go there: the coffee is diabolical and they lost me at a £3 plastic pot containing two boiled eggs and a bit of soggy spinach, which, for journalistic integrity, you could make yourself for 60p.

Wagyu talking about?: Harrods £28 wagyu sandwich

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If £7.15 seemed like somewhat of a stretch for a dine-in sandwich, how about £28 for takeaway? That’s what’s on offer in the Harrods Food Hall.

You might struggle to find these ingredients in the supermarket, though. There’s wagyu fillet, half a kilo of which can set you back anywhere between £12 and £250, depending on the grade and whether it hails from America or Japan. The butter is porcini and truffle… obviously. Neither come cheap: porcini is around £30 for 250g, and 50g of black truffle will set you back £65. Edible gold, surprisingly, might be the cheapest thing in this sandwich. You can get 10 “leaves” of 24K on Amazon for six quid. Yep, you read that correctly. There’s even gold in the bloody thing – gold mustard mayo, to be precise. Then there’s all the usual “Tory” toppings: portobello mushrooms, rocket, beer-braised onions, all encased in their baked on-site sourdough.

Nothing apparently peeves off Brits more than a pricey butty but in this case, the Harrods sandwich is more than the sum of its parts. In fact, it’s a steal. After all, if it had been served as a steak with sides on a plate, and they’d graciously provided a seat, you probably wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. There’s something to be said for gourmet meals masquerading as sandwiches, but all I’ll say is: don’t go to Harrods and expect a meal deal.

Holy mackerel: Kerridge’s £37 fish and chips

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You could, however, go to Harrods for one of the country’s most expensive fish and chips – the steepest being a gold-covered number in Glasgow for £80. “Man of the people” Tom Kerridge’s £37 entry on the list of the worst ways to spend your money seems reasonable by comparison. At least you get to sit down in the Harrods Food Hall this time.

The chef’s defence of the staggering price was met with flabbergasted ouches from punters, though critics were mostly appeased. And while he might not have reinvented the British classic – rather pushed it to its limits – he isn’t wrong to say us normies might be misinterpreting the pricing structure. Harrods diners won’t find defrosted cod and haddock on the menu, instead “line-caught, day-boat turbot”, which costs nearly £30 per kilo on a good day, and that price is only going up.

The potatoes are “incredibly expensive” as they are cut by hand. The curry sauce, inspired by the chippy in his hometown Matson, is made fresh every day. That’s not to mention the setting: at the counter, watching the chefs in action and tourists with more money than sense perusing one of the most luxurious department stores in the world.

The question isn’t: is the price justifiable? It’s: did fish and chips really need elevating? Probably not, but if Kerridge served a plate of turbot with fondant potatoes and beurre blanc for £37, we’d probably nod our heads and hand over the credit card. Perhaps, again, it’s just a matter of perspective.

Penne for your thoughts: Atavi’s £22 smoked tagliatelle

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Perspective might have been slightly lacking when a new pasta brand launched in the UK in September, offering 280g, or two measly portions, of smoked tagliatelle for a mere £22. Cost of living crisis? Never heard of it.

What’s so special about the world’s most expensive dried pasta, you ask? Oh, nothing. It’s quite literally flour and water, but it comes from the founders of what was one of the world’s frequently voted best restaurants, El Bulli, in Catalonia.

This time, Michelin-starred chef Albert Adria is trying to reinvent the wheel. Atavi sells three types: sourdough and umami for £20, and smoked for £22. Tasked with creating something new with just flour and water, Adria looked at what he could do to the dough to add distinct flavours and smells. To create the flavours of freshly baked sourdough, he naturally leavened it. To give it umami, the dough undergoes a 40-hour koji fermentation. And, for the most expensive flavour, the dough is nixtamalized (an ancient South American technique usually applied to grains) and smoked with cane wines. Plus, one bag takes a week to make, compared to the mere hours for a mass-produced bag, using bespoke machinery and handmade techniques.

At 13p a strand, it’s the most expensive dried pasta in the world. So is it worth it? The short answer is, like any artisanal product, high-quality ingredients and laborious, bespoke production methods, and the distinct flavours this produces, are what separate it from the cheap stuff. Will it replace your bog standard packet of penne? Unlikely, but just as a meal out is a treat if budget allows, there’s no reason Michelin-starred pasta at home can’t be too.