With a cornucopia of cooking shows, chef competitions and even wars fought with cupcakes, food is no less a sport than football these days.
And everybody is in the game. After all, we do have to eat.
"I'm very unimpressed when I go to some place that they say is fabulous, and they give me a tablespoon of food and charge me $100," says Helene Marks, a Tampa, Fla., resident.
Marks' strategy is to hit the happy hours where she can find dinner entrees at half price.
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Other foodies use the panoply of online coupon sites about restaurant specials, while some go old school — having dessert or cocktails at home and forgoing fancy waters.
But don't think restaurants are sitting on the sidelines. While customers are getting high-tech with their smartphones and their coupon sites, restaurant owners are studying human behavior, employing "menu engineers" to get diners to spend more.
"They are basing a lot of things they price on what is found in psychology," says William Poundstone, the Los Angeles author of "Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of it)."
Being aware of how restaurants try to make diners fork over a little more cash can make them even more food-savvy when they go out to eat. Here are sneaky ways restaurants try to wrangle money from patrons — and how to watch out for them.
No dollar signs
Get Gregg Rapp talking about menus, and he's off and running. He is known for what's mostly not seen on a menu -- namely, dollar signs. He takes credit for that innovation.
For the last three decades, Rapp's been in the business of menu engineering. He says he made his clients realize that putting those little $'s before prices were causing customers to shy away from pricier items and spend less. Now, from diners to high-end restaurants, it's the rule of thumb to leave them out.
"Dollar signs remind people of money. You open the menu, and there (are) 100 items with 100 dollar signs. If you take those off, it softens the pricing," says Rapp, who lives in Palm Springs, Calif.
Elaborate dish descriptions
A lot of thought goes into how those dishes appear when you crack open the menu. Poundstone says there's a reason why each dish is described elaborately.
"Flowery descriptions. It may sound very simple, but it does have an effect," he says. "You pay more attention to the food and less attention if (you) should pay $17 for a salad."
Then there's the placement of what's on the menu. The term, Poundstone says, is contrasting.
"One of the things they do is anchoring," he says. "They found when it comes to prices, we are very sensitive to contrast." So that dish with caviar for $100 seems outrageous. But the steak beneath it is priced at $50, and suddenly the steak looks like a deal in comparison, he says.
Another common trick is bundling, Poundstone says. You see this at fast-food restaurants with the combo meal, but it also works wonders at high-end establishments offering prix fixe. "It makes it difficult to do comparison shopping," he says. "You won't realize you are paying $13 for two scallops because you don't know what you are paying for each individual thing."
Complicated wine menus
Ordering wine at a restaurant can be daunting, especially when the sommelier hands you a leather-bound book the size of a Bible. And that's just what the restaurant is counting on.
To avoid spending too much, don't be afraid to ask questions. Tell the waiter your price range, says Chip Cassidy, a 40-year wine merchant who teaches classes on the subject at Florida International University in Miami. Many of his students go on to become retailers and to work in restaurants.
Cassidy says the first sucker's bet is to not default to the house wine. "The restaurants will buy the cheapest thing they can get and mark it up as high as they can," he says.
Antonio Pesquera, who's managed restaurants in Florida and Texas, says buying by the glass may also not be the best option. When it comes to wine by the glass, especially red, the restaurants will try to recoup the price of the bottle with the first glass. Why? Because there is no guarantee that a second glass will be poured.
But Cassidy says if you are going to drink wine, do what Bacchus would do: splurge.
"Wine has always been a luxury commodity. You have to have the bucks to drink it," Cassidy says.
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