So....alright, I'm probably going to get a skewed answer, on THIS board, but. Would anyone here go to a restauant that did STRICTLY desserts, fresh daily, to get a good dessert? Even if you ate dinner at one restaurant?

I have actually gone to another place to get dessert after eating at a restaurant. So yes I would.

Oh heck yeah man! When we do go out (rarely), we'll go get a good steak done by people who are experts in steak, not dessert, and then go to a cafe where we know they make everything there!

Oh yeah, i *love* going to dessert places. I am dessert kind of person though. A big chocolate chip cookie and a cup of coffee if like the perfect breakfast to me. I don't do it often, but I would like to every day.

I would love to have a dessert place, not like a candy shop, but desserts. Cakes, cookies, pies, cheesecakes, whole or by the slice, and then a nice espresso machine and maybe some wine. Maybe I don't want to do all the work to run a place like that, but I would surely frequent it! lol.

I have become such a food snob that I can't even eat out anymore. I swear the restaurants and cafes just don't take pride in a good meal anymore. Many of them don't even have a real chef. And when I am served bad food I get really grumpy
Sometimes it's a pain though, if I'm out shopping and hungry, and can't buy anything to eat because everything is substandard. I've started taking packed lunch with me everywhere I go.

And when it comes to cakes and desserts, well, it's not only me, but my friends too. They say I've ruined their tastebuds. I say I've made them more refined

We aren't the only food snobs. I have, on more than one occasion, been called by a non-baking friend to tell me to take samples to such-and-such a restaurant/bakery/coffee shop because they were horrible and should hire me/order from me instead. Makes me feel good.

I've become a food snob, too. But ironically, I still eat Twinkies and Spaghetti-O's and all the other junk I loved as a kid! For me, it has to do with the price. If I eat cheaper food, I expect lower quality. If I eat at a fancy expensive place, I expect it to be good! On the other hand, if the fancy restaurants mess it up, it makes my desserts look all the better! For example, I love my creme brulee recipe. A local restaurant advertises its famous "special recipe" creme brulee, and I was hesitant to try it -- if it was better than mine, I wouldn't be happy with my recipe anymore, but if it was bad, I'd have wasted five bucks. Well, I tried it, and it was terrible! I didn't even finish it, which for me is saying a LOT. And to be honest, I was a little relieved, because now I KNOW I make the best creme brulee in town!

I've turned my three-year-old into a food snob, too. I asked her what treats she wanted to take to preschool recently, and she said, "Hmm...how about creme brulee?" Um, no.

Haven't read the entire thread yet but just wanted to share. One office Christmas party was catered by a well known restaurant around here. When I saw the dessert was blueberry cheesecake I got so excited! Blueberries can't be found fresh here and cream cheese is so expensive so I was looking forward to a treat.

When I tasted it I almost spit it out. It was gelatin. The cheesecake part was frakkin gelatin! Gelatin that didn't even taste good. And the blueberry part? I don't even wanna know what it was.

A few years later me and my relatives were at a local food fair and my aunt saw the blueberry cheesecake this restaurant was selling in their kiosk. I told her, don't even come near that, it's NOT blueberry and it's NOT cheesecake. She didn't listen to me and bought it and she regretted it.

Up til now when you go to their restaurant, they have it on their menu. They should change it to FAKE blueberry cheesecake. It makes me so mad!

Someone said earlier that people prefer quantity over quality and I agree.

I absolutely detest smorgasbord eating. I refer to it as Pig Trough Eating. People practically run up to the food displays like they haven't eaten in days. Every single one that I've been to, the food has been total crap! I tell all my friends, "The only reason you SAY you like the food is because you can eat free." The protest that it's not free! I reply, "Yes it is. You pay a cover charge at the door and then you eat free for the rest of the night."

There is/was a smorgasbord restaurant near my hometown that everyone RAVED over. I was forced to go there 3 times (business meals) and it just sucked every time! Chicken and noodles were the plastic noodles (not hand rolled home made egg noodles like I make!) soaking in some hot water that had a few oils pots floating on the top. The salad bar had NO tomatoes, NO celery, NO onions ..... I consider these the basics of a salad bar!

But everyone loved it because they could Pig Trough eat!

Irony of ironies, I make a living with "buffet" catering!

Yeah, but I'm sure your buffets are awesome indy!

Whenever we go to PA to visit my in-laws we always end up at one of these "smorgasbord" restaurants. People line up like cattle waiting to get into them........I usually walk from station to station trying to find something that I want to eat and usually just end up with soup and salad.

I gave up "cafeteria" style eating when I graduated from high school!

I don't like it when people get a lot of food that they're not gonna eat and end up in the trash most of our parties here are buffet style because there are just way too many guests and some people would pile a mountain of food on their plates and then not eat it.

People just turn into idiots when you say "free food". A friend's employer caters lunch about 4 times a year. Big time. Grilled Steaks. Southern Fried Chicken. Friend tells me it is amazing to watch co-workers walk by with FOUR chicken breasts on their plate. Friend says "Who the heck eats four chicken breasts? You know they don't eat like that at home! But this is free so pile it on!"

Just say "free food!" and step back & watch the stampede.

Idiots. They turn into idiots.

So back to the original headline about a good wedding cake. My best friend in the whole world got married on June 6th, I was suppose to do her wedding cake had been planning it for MONTHS as you all know very well it takes that long so then about 3 weeks before the wedding (I am the MOH also) I get a call from her oh do you mind if my aunt does the cake instead you are going to be really busy BLAH BLAH BLAH! So just to avoid a blow out I say sure no go ahead let her make it ( my friend was only going to pay for ingredients). So we get to the wedding and there is this very nicely slightly over decorates with string work cake. I am soo excited to have a piece because I have been on WW( Weight Watchers) and am DYING for a really nice piece of cake to waste some points on. WELL omg I wanted to puke! It was BOX mixes! AND it was under baked so I was CHEWING my cake I had one bite and it was over! I don't have the nerve to tell her Oh by the way you cake sucked should have gone with me and there was STILL 5 BIG serving tray of plated cake no one took!

Poor friend I don't even think she had any

I have to say that I'm happy to see that I'm not the only food snob lurking around on this site...I do think that we need to come up with a better word to describe it, though. "Snob" is so pejorative, and we're really just discerning eaters!

I agree 100% that buffet restaurants are the worst...My Aunt and Uncle LOVE to eat, and they once insisted on taking us to the grossest place when we visited. It was a broke-down buffet that featured the greasiest food you'll ever come across, and the nastiest desserts to finish your "meal." The sanitation stuff that you see in buffet restaurants also gets me. Employees dumping hot food right on top of the old food, people touching stuff with their hands, sneezing, etc etc. Truly nasty. After my son's baptism my inlaws took us all out to a buffet, and three people in our party got sick afterwards. I've never eaten at a buffet restaurant again.

And Cupcakeluv, I'd just say HA HA HA to myself about that nasty wedding cake. I'm sure you weren't the only person to notice it was foul. It's too bad for the bride, but that's what you get when you cheap out! I'll bet her aunt didn't even make her pay for the ingredients, so she thought it was a "better deal."

Yeah, count me in, too. I don't eat anyone else's cake now, except mine and my niece's. Of course, this is the niece I taught to bake and decorate cakes.

But in defense of Sysco, in particular, their coconut chicken and shrimp are to lavish over, and so not worth making for what they charge.

Pre-cooked, processed foods? Try any chain restaurant. We went to one 5 years ago. I ordered fajitas, because they smelled so good. I'm not a fan of cooked peppers, so I asked if I could get them without. The server said "No, sorry, but the food comes in pre-measured packets, and all we do is heat them up." I asked if there was anything on the menu that wasn't pre-cooked. He said "Just the steak and baked potato, but the potato is microwaved."

Theresa

Where is Chef Gordan Ramsey when we need him? All food pre-packaged and pre-cooked? That's ridicoulous! Maybe Chef Ramsey should kick their butts and call them donkeys!