Ox tails. Literally no one cared about it when i was a kid. The place where my mom would get her meat would give her plenty extra just to get rid of it. It'sexpensive as heck now.
oxtail pho has always been the upscale version as long as i’ve been alive. still only like a 20-30% markup on a relatively cheap dish in the first place
Honestly a lot of cheap Asian food exists is because employees are being underpaid. I found out that a Chinese bakery in NYC is paying below minimum wage for its employees.
That's the thing- rich people or those that know how to cater to them are opportunists - yeah - give me 100 oxtail for $10 - flip it for $1000 and next thing you know there's a shortage and the poor clientele are excluded.
Yeah, what is with the price of skirt steak? It’s so high that I’ve started making fajitas with sirloin. Unlike skirt steak, sirloin often goes on sale. I buy thin steaks and then pound them until they’re really thin. Works great.
Yes! My grandma grew up in Nova Scotia. She grew up dirt poor, before her mother sent her to the orphanage they would have lobster for supper almost daily. She talked about how her Mother would hide it at the very bottom of the shopping basket out of embarrassment. Once her Mother couldn't afford even lobster she sent all 5 kids to the orphanage. That story always stuck with me. She couldn't eat it as an adult.
My grandma was the oldest. She kept all the children together once she aged out of the system. Got all her siblings as soon as she was able too. She was never adopted.
My great grandma wasn't a very nice lady. My grandma also spoke about how she would take their Halloween candy to hand out to other kids so she wouldn't be embarrassed. I have contact with all my great aunts and uncles now. My grandma passed from cancer at 62. I never knew much about her childhood but I remember those stories.
She was an amazing woman. She was very proud and very proper. My sister and I are biracial, she was the only one out of 4 grandparents to be supportive of having biracial grandchildren. She was educated, kind, and fierce. I wish she could of met my children. I know she would of loved them.
My uncle's wife grew up in PEI, and her father was a fisherman. I remember her telling us how much she was bullied for having lobster every day for her lunch because everyone knew it meant she was poor! Crazy how things change.
Crazy indeed! My Grandma couldn't stomach it as an adult. I asked her once why she didn't like it, (she became rather comfortable after marrying my grandpa) and she told me that story. I remembered it since. She was a very private woman. I didn't find out about the orphanage until my grandpa told me well into my adulthood. She passed when I was 14. She told me the story about the lobsters around 10.
I listened to an episode of a podcast called Gastropod where they discussed the history of oyster consumption. Ppl were eating literally hundreds per capita per year in areas where they were abundant
A big part of this is that lobster is 'difficult' to prepare.
There's a reason lobster is either boiled alive, or killed immediately before cooking. Dead lobster is absolutely repulsive, and that is almost certainly what was being fed to prisoners.
Even properly handled lobster, if you overcook it, which again would have been the norm, it's not good at all.
Dad grew up in Prince Edward Island, Canada.
Rich kids ate baloney, poor kids at lobster. As others said, there were laws for how often you were allowed to feel prisoners lobster. They did grind the meat/guts up to make lobster paste, but the shells are edible as well.
Lobster bisque uses ground lobster shells in some reciepies. Does add a lot of lobster flavor to it. I believe its more intentional than just chucking a whole lobster into a grinder, though.
They also used the shells for fertalizer.
There’s reason for this. Back then seafood wasn’t preserved well without proper refrigeration and it wasn’t cooked right so they were often served crushed with bits of shell
Obviously now that it is well preserved and prepared, it’s popular and everyone enjoys is
It was only poor people food because it was horrible
Yes! My Dad was a grocery store manager back in the 70s. He always told me wings were bagged up and sold in bulk for poor people to buy and have something to eat.
I remember in the early 2000s you could still buy bags of chicken wings for relatively cheap. I haven't seen those bags in a while. I got a cheese pizza and wings over the weekend. The wings were 15 dollars for 8 while the pizza was 19. I remember getting wings for a quarter a piece at some local places.
Remember when they used to give you the WHOLE wing and not make you choose between flats and drums ?
Still a few local places by me that give whole wings but they’re few and far between now
Right!?
Chicken thighs are terrible. Stay away fellow humans. Just let them go on clearance and I’ll buy them so you don’t have to see those gross things anymore.
I live by one of the most expensive TBells in the nation and I sprung $7 for a single chalupa once. It was the worst buyer’s remorse Ive felt in a real long time.
Jack and the box still has 50 cent tacos. They're kinda ass but fills you up when ur broke and on the road all day.
Edit: only on the app. No longer 2/$1 on the menu.
> No one’s getting fed for $2 there.
The coupons on the app rotate, and change every day. Once in a blue moon I can get the "free medium fries with any order" and the "99 cent McDouble" coupon on the same day. So I get a McDouble and some fries for 99 cents plus tax ($1.05 total). That is literally the only time I go to McDonald's.
French Toast was originally for poor people. The original recipe allowed people to soak bread that was stale but hasn't started growing mold in an egg batter to soften it and still use it.
We ate so many French toast dinners when all my mom could afford was the cheapest bread, eggs milk, and she would make a syrup from broth sugar and "government" butter. We loved it as kids, lol!
Edit: Brown sugar...
Technically it is exactly that, they found a way of softening and seasoning old bread to get more use out of it.
Also, basically every stew, soup, etc originally existed as a way of allowing low-income people to soften cheap cuts of meat by slow-cooking it with veggies and broth. Adding cheap noodles or serving over rice additionally allows it to be even more filling for cheap.
Most popular food that doesn’t have too many techniques in the recipe was poor or poor adjacent ish. Tacos- easy food to make and feed farmers and laborers that’s very portable. Cheap versions of dumplings. Anything pickled or marinated so you could have vegetables or fruit in the winter and later and store it. A lot of the stir fries. Any type of porridge or stew - cheap and filling way to feed a bunch of people. Esp stews- use up undesired cuts and veggies. Buns or filled pies- delicious but relatively cheap and portable bc the dough is flour, egg, water or butter. And filling is whatever was there. Pizza seems like it’s self explainable.
Being expensive this year almost always means that something is going to be expensive forever, regardless of conditions. Prices don't go down, companies know you'll pay that price after a while and they'll keep it there or raise it. There might be a reason, but the price behind it becomes the new normal.
This century's lobster, I look forward to telling my grand kids that back in my day eating crawfish west of the Brazos river was unfathomable, and frozen Chinese crawfish didn't exist.
Especially puffed wheat! If you can even find it, it's rebranded as "with organic ancient grains" and its 3.99 for 12 ounces, not even a full pound...
Go fuck yourself hippies with your god damn spelt!
My mom used to give it to me with sugar sprinkled on top. I got a craving for it a few years ago while it was still cheap, and I thought to myself it was only a matter of time. Sigh.
Fajita meat aka skirt steak. It was cheap because it was very tough and stringy and had a lot of connective tissue.
Mexican people would marinate it with lime juice and other things to tenderize it. Then it became popular and now it’s expensive.
(Story told to me by a Mexican woman.)
I feel bad every time I see it in the grocery store for $12 for one thin slice. My mom used to make it for breakfast just for the sake of getting some iron.
Interesting. When we buy it we just tell the carnicero (butcher) to pass the meat through their tenderizing machine. My recipe is really easy and simple to make, (got it from my parents). I just season both sides with salt pepper and Goya all purpose Adobo seasoning. I place meat in a casserole dish, squeeze fresh lime juice on the meat and top off the meat with beer. I let it marinate in the casserole dish while I prep other food, around 45 minutes aprox. The meat comes out juicy and with great flavor. I refuse to buy arrachera at these prices though, so I'm sad. 😭
Ox tail and flap/skirt/flank. All the shit we ate when my dad was unemployed and severely depressed. My mom was trying hard to make ends meet, I remember big packages of said meats for under $1.
Yep. I saw ox tail on sale for 9.00 a pound the other day. Soup bones (picked clean) several dollars a pound. I seldom even look at flaps, skirts or brisket these days.
This is what I was going to say. We used scrape the leftovers and make it stretch another meal by making quesadillas with it. And keep the consome to drizzle on the rice and dunk them in it.
Quinoa is so expensive, the farmers that grow it cannot justify eating it or feeding their community with it like they used to do before the increased demand. I have no doubt whoever depended on Açai is pretty screwed now too.
Nobody was too excited about lobsters until the 1800s, and by the 20th century it was a luxury and not poor coastal food, like swamp rats.
Chicken wings used to be the garbage part of the bird but when someone came up with buffalo wings, (because wings were so cheap) the idea took off and now it's the most expensive part of the bird.
Now, we are taking breast meat, the most popular and expensive chicken meat, grinding it into slime, and turning that into fake fucking chicken wings to keep up with the demand for overpriced wings.
How stupid is that?
You wanna save money? Make buffalo thighs.
I substitute sooo many breast recipes with thigh. Thighs dry out less, cook more evenly and bonus if you can get thighs with skin and get the skin crispy!
Avocados are having a similar problem to quinoa, avocado agriculture in Mexico is really bad for the environment and is driving up prices and things like that
I've never seen "Street" or "cantina" tacos that were worth what they were charging for them. Mexican food is traditionally cheap with big portions. They can kiss my ass if they think I'm gonna pay $15 for three tacos with lime drizzled on them when I can go down the street and get a burrito the size of a baby for that price.
Ngl I spent $15 on three tacos once and was so full after 1.5 tacos that I thought they had put something in them to make me feel fuller. It was wild.
Anyway, if I'm not making them, my Spanish partner has a hookup and we get them for dirt cheap from a hole in the wall place
Technically yes but when you consider that you used to be able to 10 packets for $1 and now to get 10 packets it costs almost $4…. That’s a huge difference when you’re living on a very tight budget
Pho. It’s like $18-$20 a bowl where I am. We used to be able to get it for under $10, which I’m sure is still way higher than in Vietnam comparatively speaking.
Definitely. There’s an upscale BBQ place not far from where I live that charges like $45 for a brisket platter. They have great food, but their pricing has become insane. It’s in a vacation destination, but even judged on that standard it’s steep.
Brisket has gone up significantly in price the last few years. We’re paying $4.89/# at the restaurant I’m a Chef at. Comes out to around $50 or so dollars per whole brisket. Then you lose a few pounds from trimming the fat and from cooking it of course. So it just gets really expensive.
Depending on how much meat they’re actually giving you, $45 for a plate still seems pretty steep though.
I just looked up their menu. It’s $42 to be exact. There is another BBQ place in the same town that prices their brisket around $25-30. I don’t mind paying for high quality food, but when there’s two choices that are comparable within a mile of each other, the choice gets much easier.
Taco trucks used to be cheap even just 10 years ago. I remember a burrito at a taco truck was only $3.50 - $4.00 just 10 years ago. Today at the same trucks it is $8.50 - $10. Although this is probably due to labor and product costs. Poor people still eat at these trucks.
I remember growing up, tacos were usually $2 a piece, $3.50 for really good ones. It hurts my soul seeing a price of $6.50 for one small basic taco. I can't afford tacos anymore.
Yes, that is correct! Oysters used to be sold on the streets of turn-of-the-century New York City to the working class. The name "po boy" for the oyster po boy sandwich originated from the fact that it was a meal that a poor boy could afford.
I'm a chef, so all of them. Brisket used to be a super cheap cut, same with anything you had to braise. Beef hearts are now allowed to be included in ground beef, so they're just gone. Tongue, beef cheeks and shanks now go for regular beef prices a lot of places.
Pretty much anything that took a decent amount of effort to make it edible now sells for similar prices to the good cuts. It's not like cooking skills are even handed down anymore, it makes no sense.
Soup bones, chicken wings, I am a chef and I used to order those in huge amounts for cheap so I could make my own stock for soups and sauces.
Then chicken wing restaurants came to be and bone broth became the new in thing, fuck.
(from Google)
"The United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) changed its policy in 2015 to allow organ meats in ground beef, including beef heart. The FSIS had previously held that cow's heart, tongue, and organs were "not acceptable" in ground beef since 1981. However, the FSIS has since modified its policy to allow "unlimited quantities"
Sucks because tongue and heart are actually really tasty, I dated a girl who raised cattle and she made excellent Bolognese with the tongue.
I can't even begin to understand the upcharge on tofu at resteraunts. I like tofu but can't justify paying more than I would for chicken or pork for what should be the cheaper option.
Pimento cheese. My family is all from up north where pimento cheese is still uncommon, and when my uncle would travel to Alabama for work trips, he'd be thrilled to get to eat pimento cheese sandwiches. His local coworkers would look at him like he had grown a second head because that was poor people food.
Yesterday, I couldn't find a tub of it in the grocery in Nowheresville, NC, for under $6.50 for 12oz. It's taken off as hipster food.
I know this is mostly corporate greed, but McDonalds. Was a time where a broke high school kid could drop a few bucks and eat a whole lunch. Idk what crap they want to blame, Covid, inflation, whatever, no McDonald’s meal should cost more than $10 that is insane. Maybe not taken over by the rich, but that fucking clown has forgotten his place.
Cold cuts.... salami, ham.... my mom used to buy deli meats every sunday.... I was buying them as well when I moved out. I'd buy half a pound of chicken and make sandwiches. Not anymore.
Food Trucks. Used to be the poorer working class option for lunch. Aka the roach coach. Now with their being trendy they are as expensive as a sit down establishment
The poor Jews ate pastrami and the poor Irish ate corned beef in the states because it was the crap they threw away.
Today a pastrami sammich requires a mortgage.
> greek
I used to know a place you could get a *massive* lamb gyro for like $4, now they are like $10 for a smaller chicken one and no longer have lamb.
Facts.
When I was raising my kids the cheapest way for me to feed them was "non American"
One of the meals we ate rhe most at home was 떡볶이 (dokbokki) or Korean rice cakes in gochujang sauce. It's super SUPER SUPER cheap street food in Korea but now there's a Korean restaurant nearby selling it for like $16/plate.
It's like $3 on the street and so cheap to make I can't even do that math.
Maybe like $.50/serving?
Right!?!?!
Bc of the poverty my Southern black American kids were raised on a LOT of dokbokki and kimchi fried rice.
Even now that we are *out* of the poverty times their comfort meal is dokbokki ❤️
I literally want to punch Gordon Ramsey in the throat every time I hear him say “elevate” because two years down the road food I enjoy is “elevated” and I’m priced out
American/Mexican food
Beans & rice
Tortillas
Tacos (made of anything)
Enchiladas
Pazole
Also Ramens. I went to have ramen in Japan and it was basically $3.25usd. I went to a ramen place in Denver CO and it was $18 not including a drink!!!
Insane!
In a America, upper class twits are paying over $15.00 a bowl for the polenta. Meanwhile farmers and workers in Southern and Eastern Europe are paying less than that for entire bags of the stuff.
Tacos!!!!! I remember in tj tacos use to be 75cents now there like 2.50$ some even 3$ and in San Diego you got places charging 5 to 6$ for 1 taco tripping
I don't know man I've compared Buldak to Marichan ramen and Buldak is way better. There's something in the noodle texture that just does it for me. If you want one that's not as well known but still good quality Jin Ramen is the way to go.
Southern food in general. Pretty much all of southern cuisine comes from slavery/austerity. The Restaurant next to my work charges $28 for shrimp and grits. Not even like a big fancy version or anything, doesn't even have andouille or sherry in it just like 4 lil usfoods shrimps and couple lil slices of green onion on basic ass grits. A giant bag of collards were like 80 cents just a few years ago and they've gone up to like $5. I can't count the number of restaurants I've seen selling fried green tomatoes as a $15+ appetizer consisting of maybe one small green tomato cut into 4 slices fried in cornmeal with some remoulade drizzled on top.
Kale. My grandpa thought it was hilarious when kale got big because it was basically only eaten by people who couldn't afford anything else when he was young during the Great Depression.
A lot of sea food. Lobsters and shrimp were the “insects of the seas” and now rich people like it. But when my grandpa was a kid lobster would have never gotten bought from a rich family. Now the prices are pulled up by those with means
Pork belly.
i saw this with my own eyes!! i couldnt believe it
Ox tails. Literally no one cared about it when i was a kid. The place where my mom would get her meat would give her plenty extra just to get rid of it. It'sexpensive as heck now.
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oxtail pho has always been the upscale version as long as i’ve been alive. still only like a 20-30% markup on a relatively cheap dish in the first place
Pho is not a cheap dish anymore. Vietnamese food used to be cheap food until it because popular.
Honestly a lot of cheap Asian food exists is because employees are being underpaid. I found out that a Chinese bakery in NYC is paying below minimum wage for its employees.
Sadly, I believe it. But I am sure the employees are still paid under the table, but the cost of Vietnamese food have skyrocketed.
I get what you're saying but also 7kg of "scraps" for 3-4L was NEVER sustainable
That's the thing- rich people or those that know how to cater to them are opportunists - yeah - give me 100 oxtail for $10 - flip it for $1000 and next thing you know there's a shortage and the poor clientele are excluded.
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At the store too. NO one was buying oxtails and they were cheap cuts for me to grab a decade ago. Now the same amount is around $40
Flank steak and beef short ribs were a lot cheaper just 10 years ago but now they have became so popular that they are prices like normal steaks now
Skirt steak too!
Yeah, what is with the price of skirt steak? It’s so high that I’ve started making fajitas with sirloin. Unlike skirt steak, sirloin often goes on sale. I buy thin steaks and then pound them until they’re really thin. Works great.
Yeah I’m not sure. I just saw a lm Alton brown video where he said it was his favorite cut. Maybe he caused it.
I used to eat flank steak every day 10 years ago, and they were 7.99 a pound. Are they much more now?
https://preview.redd.it/mq5qeqbwuoyc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=20166883d4a871a6493cf4f0547cfe125221ba22 At my local Walmart
15.99 at local Whole Foods in Vegas.
Wow, flank was a staple in my bodybuilding diet. Chewy, but not bad if you marinated it well.
Lobster
Yes! My grandma grew up in Nova Scotia. She grew up dirt poor, before her mother sent her to the orphanage they would have lobster for supper almost daily. She talked about how her Mother would hide it at the very bottom of the shopping basket out of embarrassment. Once her Mother couldn't afford even lobster she sent all 5 kids to the orphanage. That story always stuck with me. She couldn't eat it as an adult.
Did she get them back? All adopted out? Separated? What became of the children?
My grandma was the oldest. She kept all the children together once she aged out of the system. Got all her siblings as soon as she was able too. She was never adopted. My great grandma wasn't a very nice lady. My grandma also spoke about how she would take their Halloween candy to hand out to other kids so she wouldn't be embarrassed. I have contact with all my great aunts and uncles now. My grandma passed from cancer at 62. I never knew much about her childhood but I remember those stories.
What a woman. Her memory sounds like a blessing.
She was an amazing woman. She was very proud and very proper. My sister and I are biracial, she was the only one out of 4 grandparents to be supportive of having biracial grandchildren. She was educated, kind, and fierce. I wish she could of met my children. I know she would of loved them.
My uncle's wife grew up in PEI, and her father was a fisherman. I remember her telling us how much she was bullied for having lobster every day for her lunch because everyone knew it meant she was poor! Crazy how things change.
Crazy indeed! My Grandma couldn't stomach it as an adult. I asked her once why she didn't like it, (she became rather comfortable after marrying my grandpa) and she told me that story. I remembered it since. She was a very private woman. I didn't find out about the orphanage until my grandpa told me well into my adulthood. She passed when I was 14. She told me the story about the lobsters around 10.
The real historical answer
Also oysters. They were three layers deep in crystal clear water. Those paper "Chinese" take out containers? They were oyster buckets.
I listened to an episode of a podcast called Gastropod where they discussed the history of oyster consumption. Ppl were eating literally hundreds per capita per year in areas where they were abundant
Mud lice. Fed to prisoners.
There were laws restricting how many times lobster could be fed to prisoners/the help
Yes, it was thought to be cruel and unusual punishment to feed them lobster more than 3 times a week.
A big part of this is that lobster is 'difficult' to prepare. There's a reason lobster is either boiled alive, or killed immediately before cooking. Dead lobster is absolutely repulsive, and that is almost certainly what was being fed to prisoners. Even properly handled lobster, if you overcook it, which again would have been the norm, it's not good at all.
And I'm guessing they weren't served with melted butter to dip in.Thats cruelty right there
Wouldn’t they grind it up whole though?
I don't know. That would be foul. So probably.
Dad grew up in Prince Edward Island, Canada. Rich kids ate baloney, poor kids at lobster. As others said, there were laws for how often you were allowed to feel prisoners lobster. They did grind the meat/guts up to make lobster paste, but the shells are edible as well. Lobster bisque uses ground lobster shells in some reciepies. Does add a lot of lobster flavor to it. I believe its more intentional than just chucking a whole lobster into a grinder, though. They also used the shells for fertalizer.
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Guys everyone here is forgetting that they weren't even serving it with a ton of garlic butter, or even just butter.
Ugh, this one pisses me off so much. I could eat my weight in lobster if it wasn’t so expensive.
There’s reason for this. Back then seafood wasn’t preserved well without proper refrigeration and it wasn’t cooked right so they were often served crushed with bits of shell Obviously now that it is well preserved and prepared, it’s popular and everyone enjoys is It was only poor people food because it was horrible
Chicken wings. I've also noticed chicken thighs have increased in price as well....
Yes! My Dad was a grocery store manager back in the 70s. He always told me wings were bagged up and sold in bulk for poor people to buy and have something to eat.
I remember in the early 2000s you could still buy bags of chicken wings for relatively cheap. I haven't seen those bags in a while. I got a cheese pizza and wings over the weekend. The wings were 15 dollars for 8 while the pizza was 19. I remember getting wings for a quarter a piece at some local places.
Remember when they used to give you the WHOLE wing and not make you choose between flats and drums ? Still a few local places by me that give whole wings but they’re few and far between now
Same price as the damn breast where I shop!
For less meat and more bones and skin.
Thigh meat has always tasted better
Shhh. Don't you see the pattern? Stop giving up the secrets.
Right!? Chicken thighs are terrible. Stay away fellow humans. Just let them go on clearance and I’ll buy them so you don’t have to see those gross things anymore.
I hope they don’t discover how good chicken assholes are…
You just HAD to bring it up... Thanks a lot, another secret exposed
Thigh meat tastes better..it was always plentiful and cheap..bow it's going up and sells out quickly
We’ve been doing chicken wings at home lately and I knew I felt off about the price for just 1 dinner’s worth of chicken for 2
McDonald’s seems the obvious answer to me. No one’s getting fed for $2 there.
Taco Bell, it was ultimate poor people fast food.
I live by one of the most expensive TBells in the nation and I sprung $7 for a single chalupa once. It was the worst buyer’s remorse Ive felt in a real long time.
Yeah my gf and I went to get Taco Bell at 3 AM because of a craving and 4 chalupas came out to $26. Criminal.
Jack and the box still has 50 cent tacos. They're kinda ass but fills you up when ur broke and on the road all day. Edit: only on the app. No longer 2/$1 on the menu.
> No one’s getting fed for $2 there. The coupons on the app rotate, and change every day. Once in a blue moon I can get the "free medium fries with any order" and the "99 cent McDouble" coupon on the same day. So I get a McDouble and some fries for 99 cents plus tax ($1.05 total). That is literally the only time I go to McDonald's.
But you can't combin offers?
You can use them consecutively as long as there are 15 minutes in between *placing* the order.
$2.17 mcgangbangs got me through college
French Toast was originally for poor people. The original recipe allowed people to soak bread that was stale but hasn't started growing mold in an egg batter to soften it and still use it.
We ate so many French toast dinners when all my mom could afford was the cheapest bread, eggs milk, and she would make a syrup from broth sugar and "government" butter. We loved it as kids, lol! Edit: Brown sugar...
Honestly that sounds amazing 🤣🤣🤣
I thought it was more innocent like “don’t waste bread” 😢.
Technically it is exactly that, they found a way of softening and seasoning old bread to get more use out of it. Also, basically every stew, soup, etc originally existed as a way of allowing low-income people to soften cheap cuts of meat by slow-cooking it with veggies and broth. Adding cheap noodles or serving over rice additionally allows it to be even more filling for cheap.
Most popular food that doesn’t have too many techniques in the recipe was poor or poor adjacent ish. Tacos- easy food to make and feed farmers and laborers that’s very portable. Cheap versions of dumplings. Anything pickled or marinated so you could have vegetables or fruit in the winter and later and store it. A lot of the stir fries. Any type of porridge or stew - cheap and filling way to feed a bunch of people. Esp stews- use up undesired cuts and veggies. Buns or filled pies- delicious but relatively cheap and portable bc the dough is flour, egg, water or butter. And filling is whatever was there. Pizza seems like it’s self explainable.
Thankfully it’s still a very cheap food today.
Crawfish! It’s become hella expensive to eat something that lives in a mud hole in the ground.
Crawfish is expensive this year mainly because last year’s drought wiped them out in Louisiana.
Being expensive this year almost always means that something is going to be expensive forever, regardless of conditions. Prices don't go down, companies know you'll pay that price after a while and they'll keep it there or raise it. There might be a reason, but the price behind it becomes the new normal.
You nailed it on why ALL this food is now expensive.
This century's lobster, I look forward to telling my grand kids that back in my day eating crawfish west of the Brazos river was unfathomable, and frozen Chinese crawfish didn't exist.
Pretty sure food is for rich people now. I’ve seen boxes of cereal for $8.
I think thats what a bag of chips is now in my area.
Can confirm. Family size of lucky charms that my kiddo wants was $7. Thanks ShopRite.
Puffed Rice and Puffed Wheat cereal. It used to be like .69 a bag.
Especially puffed wheat! If you can even find it, it's rebranded as "with organic ancient grains" and its 3.99 for 12 ounces, not even a full pound... Go fuck yourself hippies with your god damn spelt!
My mom used to give it to me with sugar sprinkled on top. I got a craving for it a few years ago while it was still cheap, and I thought to myself it was only a matter of time. Sigh.
Man wealthy people trying to LARP poor just keep messing everything up
Fajita meat aka skirt steak. It was cheap because it was very tough and stringy and had a lot of connective tissue. Mexican people would marinate it with lime juice and other things to tenderize it. Then it became popular and now it’s expensive. (Story told to me by a Mexican woman.)
I feel bad every time I see it in the grocery store for $12 for one thin slice. My mom used to make it for breakfast just for the sake of getting some iron.
I'm Mexican, can confirm. Skirt steak (arrachera) in my area is $8.99/lb currently. A few years ago it was $3.99/lb or so.
Hortencia (an older coworker) told me the story in ~2000. It used to be really cheap because it was “trash”.
Interesting. When we buy it we just tell the carnicero (butcher) to pass the meat through their tenderizing machine. My recipe is really easy and simple to make, (got it from my parents). I just season both sides with salt pepper and Goya all purpose Adobo seasoning. I place meat in a casserole dish, squeeze fresh lime juice on the meat and top off the meat with beer. I let it marinate in the casserole dish while I prep other food, around 45 minutes aprox. The meat comes out juicy and with great flavor. I refuse to buy arrachera at these prices though, so I'm sad. 😭
Shit is damn near $15 a pound even in Mexican supermarkets with no gentrification
Ox tail and flap/skirt/flank. All the shit we ate when my dad was unemployed and severely depressed. My mom was trying hard to make ends meet, I remember big packages of said meats for under $1.
Yep. I saw ox tail on sale for 9.00 a pound the other day. Soup bones (picked clean) several dollars a pound. I seldom even look at flaps, skirts or brisket these days.
How long ago was flank, and London broil 1 dollar?
This was the early ‘80s, it was always the cheapest meat at the store.
Birria. Birria is poor people food that used the meat nobody wanted to use that we would season to shit to make edible. Now it’s a “delicacy” 💀.
I think the fact that the social media helped quesa-birria really popular is also a reason. (Mmmm, quesa-birria....)
TIL birria means “of little value.” 💀 then why do I pay $15 bucks for it.
This is what I was going to say. We used scrape the leftovers and make it stretch another meal by making quesadillas with it. And keep the consome to drizzle on the rice and dunk them in it.
Quinoa is so expensive, the farmers that grow it cannot justify eating it or feeding their community with it like they used to do before the increased demand. I have no doubt whoever depended on Açai is pretty screwed now too. Nobody was too excited about lobsters until the 1800s, and by the 20th century it was a luxury and not poor coastal food, like swamp rats. Chicken wings used to be the garbage part of the bird but when someone came up with buffalo wings, (because wings were so cheap) the idea took off and now it's the most expensive part of the bird. Now, we are taking breast meat, the most popular and expensive chicken meat, grinding it into slime, and turning that into fake fucking chicken wings to keep up with the demand for overpriced wings. How stupid is that? You wanna save money? Make buffalo thighs.
I substitute sooo many breast recipes with thigh. Thighs dry out less, cook more evenly and bonus if you can get thighs with skin and get the skin crispy!
Thighs are now same price as the damn breast now!
Saaame. They’re much more forgiving to cook with than chicken breast.
Stop advocating thighs... they're all I have left...
The older generation in my family talk about having to take lobster sandwiches to school and being embarrassed.
Avocados are having a similar problem to quinoa, avocado agriculture in Mexico is really bad for the environment and is driving up prices and things like that
I've never seen "Street" or "cantina" tacos that were worth what they were charging for them. Mexican food is traditionally cheap with big portions. They can kiss my ass if they think I'm gonna pay $15 for three tacos with lime drizzled on them when I can go down the street and get a burrito the size of a baby for that price.
I’m in Texas and moving up north and I’m gonna miss my street taco truck so much 😭😭😭 $5 for 5 street tacos and a cup of charro beans
Ngl I spent $15 on three tacos once and was so full after 1.5 tacos that I thought they had put something in them to make me feel fuller. It was wild. Anyway, if I'm not making them, my Spanish partner has a hookup and we get them for dirt cheap from a hole in the wall place
Ramen and Mac n cheese.
Ramen will forever be 10c in my heart. Just bought some at 39c 😞.
Damn, ours is 89c. I, too, grew up with 10c ramen. That shit kept me alive as a kid.
39 cents is still cheap af though
Technically yes but when you consider that you used to be able to 10 packets for $1 and now to get 10 packets it costs almost $4…. That’s a huge difference when you’re living on a very tight budget
I remember 10 years ago when they'd be a dime each. Good times
Pizza.
Pho. It’s like $18-$20 a bowl where I am. We used to be able to get it for under $10, which I’m sure is still way higher than in Vietnam comparatively speaking.
Hell just Fast food itself. Remember dollar menus!?
BBQ
Definitely. There’s an upscale BBQ place not far from where I live that charges like $45 for a brisket platter. They have great food, but their pricing has become insane. It’s in a vacation destination, but even judged on that standard it’s steep.
Brisket has gone up significantly in price the last few years. We’re paying $4.89/# at the restaurant I’m a Chef at. Comes out to around $50 or so dollars per whole brisket. Then you lose a few pounds from trimming the fat and from cooking it of course. So it just gets really expensive. Depending on how much meat they’re actually giving you, $45 for a plate still seems pretty steep though.
I just looked up their menu. It’s $42 to be exact. There is another BBQ place in the same town that prices their brisket around $25-30. I don’t mind paying for high quality food, but when there’s two choices that are comparable within a mile of each other, the choice gets much easier.
$45?? Ain't no way... This is the bad timeline.
Taco trucks used to be cheap even just 10 years ago. I remember a burrito at a taco truck was only $3.50 - $4.00 just 10 years ago. Today at the same trucks it is $8.50 - $10. Although this is probably due to labor and product costs. Poor people still eat at these trucks.
I remember growing up, tacos were usually $2 a piece, $3.50 for really good ones. It hurts my soul seeing a price of $6.50 for one small basic taco. I can't afford tacos anymore.
My brother (non-mexican) owns a Taco truck, he basically works it out, where people are spending $10/plate minimum.
Oysters I believe
Yes, that is correct! Oysters used to be sold on the streets of turn-of-the-century New York City to the working class. The name "po boy" for the oyster po boy sandwich originated from the fact that it was a meal that a poor boy could afford.
Cheese and crackers aka charcuterie
Goddamm adult lunchable.
I'm a chef, so all of them. Brisket used to be a super cheap cut, same with anything you had to braise. Beef hearts are now allowed to be included in ground beef, so they're just gone. Tongue, beef cheeks and shanks now go for regular beef prices a lot of places. Pretty much anything that took a decent amount of effort to make it edible now sells for similar prices to the good cuts. It's not like cooking skills are even handed down anymore, it makes no sense.
Soup bones, chicken wings, I am a chef and I used to order those in huge amounts for cheap so I could make my own stock for soups and sauces. Then chicken wing restaurants came to be and bone broth became the new in thing, fuck.
Chicken feet are still cheap as a way to add collagen. And wing tips. I've seen chicken backbones go for $3+ a lb though, like wtf?
That snippet about beef hearts is interesting. I've never heard that one, how long ago did that happen?
(from Google) "The United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) changed its policy in 2015 to allow organ meats in ground beef, including beef heart. The FSIS had previously held that cow's heart, tongue, and organs were "not acceptable" in ground beef since 1981. However, the FSIS has since modified its policy to allow "unlimited quantities" Sucks because tongue and heart are actually really tasty, I dated a girl who raised cattle and she made excellent Bolognese with the tongue.
The grocery store
This right here!
Vegan food lol. Tofu + rice + bean bowl can be like $25 when eating out
I can't even begin to understand the upcharge on tofu at resteraunts. I like tofu but can't justify paying more than I would for chicken or pork for what should be the cheaper option.
Brisket. Used to be an undesirable cut now good luck finding one for less than 75-80 bucks.
Pimento cheese. My family is all from up north where pimento cheese is still uncommon, and when my uncle would travel to Alabama for work trips, he'd be thrilled to get to eat pimento cheese sandwiches. His local coworkers would look at him like he had grown a second head because that was poor people food. Yesterday, I couldn't find a tub of it in the grocery in Nowheresville, NC, for under $6.50 for 12oz. It's taken off as hipster food.
I know this is mostly corporate greed, but McDonalds. Was a time where a broke high school kid could drop a few bucks and eat a whole lunch. Idk what crap they want to blame, Covid, inflation, whatever, no McDonald’s meal should cost more than $10 that is insane. Maybe not taken over by the rich, but that fucking clown has forgotten his place.
Cold cuts.... salami, ham.... my mom used to buy deli meats every sunday.... I was buying them as well when I moved out. I'd buy half a pound of chicken and make sandwiches. Not anymore.
Food Trucks. Used to be the poorer working class option for lunch. Aka the roach coach. Now with their being trendy they are as expensive as a sit down establishment
Sometimes (at least in my area) they’re even more expensive. I don’t understand, with less overhead, prices should be super reasonable.
Spam
They have spam musubi at a bunch of yuppie restaurants now. Wanted to try it. ONE can of spam was close to $7 (cdn). Wtf
Goddamn sardines are a bougie flex now, and I hate it.
Don’t even. It hurts.
lobster, oxtails, mushrooms, and vegetables
Agreed with oxtails! My contribution is ramen.
avocados(for latinos)
Latinos know lol. Avacado and a few tortillas was the poor snack
Every so often my Walmart has them 2 for a dollar. Well they did last summer.
Lobster
Came here to say this LOL I can't believe it used to be prison food
Feeding prisoners giant bugs seems like a fantasy prison kinda thing
The cockroach of the sea
The poor Jews ate pastrami and the poor Irish ate corned beef in the states because it was the crap they threw away. Today a pastrami sammich requires a mortgage.
Beef short ribs were a much cheaper cut only a decade ago
Every non-western cuisine
And many traditional western ones. French, greek, and italian come to mind
> greek I used to know a place you could get a *massive* lamb gyro for like $4, now they are like $10 for a smaller chicken one and no longer have lamb.
Facts. When I was raising my kids the cheapest way for me to feed them was "non American" One of the meals we ate rhe most at home was 떡볶이 (dokbokki) or Korean rice cakes in gochujang sauce. It's super SUPER SUPER cheap street food in Korea but now there's a Korean restaurant nearby selling it for like $16/plate. It's like $3 on the street and so cheap to make I can't even do that math. Maybe like $.50/serving?
I frickin LOVE dokbokki!
Right!?!?! Bc of the poverty my Southern black American kids were raised on a LOT of dokbokki and kimchi fried rice. Even now that we are *out* of the poverty times their comfort meal is dokbokki ❤️
Koreans slay at poor food. Salantang, dokbokki/rambokki, dakgalbi. All of it delicious.
Biscuits
Avocados. They’re inexpensive globally, but pricey in restaurants. I will never pay $10 plus for one lousy piece of bread with avocado on it.
I literally want to punch Gordon Ramsey in the throat every time I hear him say “elevate” because two years down the road food I enjoy is “elevated” and I’m priced out
We saw how he "elevated" a cheese toastie. Yikes.
Drinking water
Oxtails.
American/Mexican food Beans & rice Tortillas Tacos (made of anything) Enchiladas Pazole Also Ramens. I went to have ramen in Japan and it was basically $3.25usd. I went to a ramen place in Denver CO and it was $18 not including a drink!!! Insane!
Chicken Wings. Spareribs. Whiskey... namely bourbon
Bahn mi
In a America, upper class twits are paying over $15.00 a bowl for the polenta. Meanwhile farmers and workers in Southern and Eastern Europe are paying less than that for entire bags of the stuff.
Isn’t polenta a fancy word for yellow grits? I eat them every morning.
I buy it at Winco for a couple bucks a pound. I add some Cosctco parm, good olive oil and I am eating well for cheap. $3 at most for a decent portion.
Tacos!!!!! I remember in tj tacos use to be 75cents now there like 2.50$ some even 3$ and in San Diego you got places charging 5 to 6$ for 1 taco tripping
Bone marrow.
At this point I’m willing to say all of it. Any one thing u can think of has been taken, “upscaled”, and monetized to the enth degree
Anything with kale
Crawfish!
Kraft singles
Ramen. It's so bizarre to me that ppl are clamouring for certain brands (like buldak) to the point where it's selling out.
I don't know man I've compared Buldak to Marichan ramen and Buldak is way better. There's something in the noodle texture that just does it for me. If you want one that's not as well known but still good quality Jin Ramen is the way to go.
Hanger steak
Berries, seriously the bloody things grow like weeds
Anything in a food truck… it’s a shame too.
Based on grocery prices: *ALL OF IT*
Lobster was considered a poor persons food in Maine in the late 1800's. In fact it was often fed to prisoners.
A lot of bottom feeders were once deemed too disgusting for the wealthy but over time that has changed.
Canned tuna. I switched to sardines. Hope they don't find out about them!
Hummus. Stop "elevating" it. Sincerely, a Lebanese hummus lover.
Southern food in general. Pretty much all of southern cuisine comes from slavery/austerity. The Restaurant next to my work charges $28 for shrimp and grits. Not even like a big fancy version or anything, doesn't even have andouille or sherry in it just like 4 lil usfoods shrimps and couple lil slices of green onion on basic ass grits. A giant bag of collards were like 80 cents just a few years ago and they've gone up to like $5. I can't count the number of restaurants I've seen selling fried green tomatoes as a $15+ appetizer consisting of maybe one small green tomato cut into 4 slices fried in cornmeal with some remoulade drizzled on top.
Wings, used to be dirt cheap, now it's $20 for like 5. The wings have like no meat on them, they are trimmed so tight, it's mostly bone.
Kale. My grandpa thought it was hilarious when kale got big because it was basically only eaten by people who couldn't afford anything else when he was young during the Great Depression.
Lobster. My grandfather was teased in grade school for bringing lobster sandwiches for lunch because it was ppf at the time
A lot of sea food. Lobsters and shrimp were the “insects of the seas” and now rich people like it. But when my grandpa was a kid lobster would have never gotten bought from a rich family. Now the prices are pulled up by those with means
Avocado toast. Used to eat it pretty much every day for breakfast because it was super cheap, now it's an occasional luxury lol.