Deterioration of Dining Quality and Experience

[Patong2021]

This holiday season, I have been eating out frequently in Hua Hin  with my friends and am profoundly disappointed by the deterioration in the quality of food at many places that were once reliable and had some semblance of standards. It covers all types of dining. I don't believe it is attributable to the high season surge of  visitors, but rather a calculated selection of lower quality ingredients, and the cutting of  corners. Am I alone? Here are some examples;

 

- A couple weeks ago I was transiting through Bangkok and statyed at the airport Novotel. Breakfast buffets are never anything to celebrate, but  Novotel once had a decent breakfast spread. What I experienced was empty selection offerings and what was available was cold. This was at 8:30 AM after the  breakfast rush.

-Stayed at  a Dusit, which is usually reliable and consistent in its quality. 500 baht for breakfast buffet and that also featured empty serving  trays. It was a farce.

-Had dinner last week at my once favourite Brazilian steak house in town. They come along and carve off beef, lamb, chicken whatever. I had not eaten here in 6 months as I was scaling back on beef. Well, what a shock. The beef was  tough, and  limited. Instead, they tried to push the pork belly, pineapple, greasy chicken wings. The result is that I won't  go back.

- Had breakfast  at Coffee Club. It was just unappetizing . Not bad, but not good.

- Tried a chain -  ****  ***nection. A 3200 baht insult with a nasty beef serving.

- Had a Burger King Chicken crispy yesterday and it left me feeling ill. Smeared with white goo, wilted lettuce, and characterized by grease.

-Yesterday, breakfast at a local go to place that I usually enjoy. Just awful. The bacon was 2 flat wedges of fried sliced fat. 200 baht.

- Last week, Chicken  Curry at one of my regular restaurants. I was laid out with awful food poisoning for 2 days. I was literally leaking crap and could not stray far from the toilet. 

- Went to the fish strip at the night market. The fish I was served, was not fresh. The other dishes were  greasy. 1500 baht for a mediocre experience at a place that had once been decent.

The only reliable and consistently good experience has been with Starbucks. Its bakery items are always fresh.

 

I will be mostly eating at home for the coming weeks. Ok, so this may read like a rant, but I just can't get over how quickly the quality of restaurant dining has deriorated in the past  few months. Looking at many of the visitors who are in the estaurants, I don't think many of them know that they are being  taken advantage of. In years past there were lots of wine and cocktail drinkers, Now, so many of them are beer drinkers and ordering much less than before.

 

Ok, so I am over reacting, or have you noticed this now too?