The Bill Only Tells Half the Story.

Some meals are expensive and worth every cent. Others are expensive and leave a bad taste. Between a Portuguese restaurant, an old friend, a broken coffee machine and three helpings of salad, I have discovered that the price is only part of what matters.

By Ralf The Grillmeister, Germany.

Land, Sea and a Little Bit of Garlic.

Last Friday, Ira and I went to our favourite Portuguese restaurant. We have been there many times, and I already know what I want before I sit down. That is always a good sign.

We started with a special bruschetta. Not the normal one with only tomatoes, but a mixture of tomatoes, peppers, a little cheese and something sweet and sour. You get three small pieces of bread and plenty of the vegetable mixture. It is very, very good.

After that came Land und Meer, land and sea. And I can tell you, there is a lot of land and a lot of sea on this plate. Beef fillet, pork fillet, spicy chorizo, little calamari tubes and scampi. Everything is grilled, and they have this fantastic oil with garlic chopped so small that you can hardly see the pieces.

My wife likes the fish and seafood, so she gives me her beef and pork. For me, this is a very good arrangement.

There are also wonderful little potatoes, cut thin and fried until they are really crispy, and black beans with something like pancetta. You look at the plate and you don’t know where to start. What should I eat first? The meat? The calamari? The potatoes?

For me, the beef comes first. It must be hot and medium rare. I don’t like it when it is well done. That is very important.

We know the people in this restaurant. Ira had telephoned before we went, and Adriana, the waitress, knew we were coming. There is always something familiar about being there. We enjoy the food, we enjoy the evening, and we know what to expect.

And who paid?

I did. But Ira and I have only one bank account, so perhaps it is more correct to say that my card did the work.

That is the easy part of the story. The more interesting question is what makes a restaurant bill worthwhile.

The Restaurant Where I Don’t Need a Menu.

There is another restaurant in Otterndorf that I like very much. It is run by a Spanish man and his German wife, and the food is a mixture of Spanish and Italian cooking.

Sometimes the waiter doesn’t even want me to look at the menu. He has something special for me, and he knows I will probably enjoy it.

I like looking at what other people are eating. When I see an interesting plate going past, I ask what it is. The waiter tells me, and I say that perhaps next time I will have that. But when I return, there is another special dish waiting to be discovered.

One of my favourites has scampi, large calamari tubes and many, many, many pieces of garlic. There is a fantastic sauce, little salted Spanish potatoes with mojo sauce, and a salad with a dressing that is really something special.

Then I look around again. There are things written on the walls, dishes that are not on the normal menu. Perhaps something with truffles or porcini mushrooms. I begin thinking about what I might order next time, and the waiter laughs because he knows me already.

An evening for Ira and me, with a starter, can cost between 100 and 120 euros. That is a lot of money for dinner. I know that.

But when the food is excellent and the evening is so enjoyable, I don’t have a problem paying it.

I am not sitting there thinking only about the price of the ingredients. Somebody has prepared this meal, somebody has thought about the flavours, and somebody has made us feel welcome. The waiter talks with us, remembers what I enjoy, and sometimes recommends something I would not have chosen myself.

I leave the restaurant happy. That makes a difference.

But I have also experienced the opposite.

The Most Expensive Sunset in Gran Canaria.

It was my birthday, the sixth of January, and we were on holiday in Gran Canaria.

We have friends who live there, and Kirsten suggested a special Italian restaurant. She speaks Spanish and knows the island, so we went together.

It was a fantastic evening.

The waiter welcomed us, and somebody came out of the kitchen with a beautiful fish. They showed us what they could prepare, how they would grill it, and what would come with it. Everything sounded wonderful.

I paid for the three of us, and although the bill was quite high, I had absolutely no problem with it. The food was fantastic, the people were friendly, and we had a lovely evening.

Two days later, I said to Ira that we should go back. It had been so good, and I wanted to enjoy it again.

This time, Kirsten was not with us.

And suddenly it was a completely different restaurant.

Nobody seemed particularly interested in us. We were just another two tourists sitting at a table. I asked about the fish we had enjoyed on our first visit, but the waiter told me that the large fish was only for two people. Ira wanted calamari, not fish, so that was not possible.

In the end, I ate a pizza.

Now, the location was still beautiful. We sat outside looking across the promenade towards the sea. The sun was going down, and then a sailing boat appeared exactly in front of it. The sunlight was shining on the water.

It was so kitschy! You could hardly imagine a more perfect holiday picture.

And yet, something was missing.

The food was okay, but the bill was very expensive again. On our first visit, I had been happy to pay. On the second, I was not happy at all.

We had gone back expecting another wonderful evening, and instead we felt like two people out of a hundred. Nothing special. Just customers.

I told Kirsten what had happened. She recommends restaurants to visitors as part of her work, so I wanted her to know that our experience without her had been completely different.

Of course, I cannot say what happened in the kitchen or why the service changed. I only know how the two evenings felt to us.

The first was worth the money.

The second had a beautiful sunset, but that was not enough.

My Oldest Friend and a Rusty Car.

When I go out with friends, we normally pay separately. That is easy, and nobody has to make a big discussion about the bill.

But sometimes friendship makes the question of payment much more complicated.

Take my friend Andreas.

Andreas is my oldest friend. Not necessarily my best friend, but the oldest. We have known each other for so many years that we can spend an afternoon talking about our wives, our childhood, and all the things we experienced when we were young.

Some time ago, we had a problem with rust underneath Ira’s old Volkswagen Eos. Andreas knew how we could treat it and invited me to come over so that we could work on the car together.

We used special materials, oil and wax, and spent time working underneath the car. These materials were not cheap, and Andreas was helping me with something that would otherwise have cost money.

So I asked him what I could do for him. Did he need anything? Could I give him something?

He said no.

For him, it was already wonderful that we were spending time together, working on the car and talking about old stories.

I understood what he meant, but I still had a little problem.

I don’t like it when somebody does something for me and I cannot give anything back.

Then I had an idea.

Andreas and his wife Tina also like good restaurants. Why don’t the four of us go out for a lovely meal? I would invite them, and we could enjoy another evening together.

He thought it was a very good idea. Finding a date would be difficult, so perhaps November or December would work. That was no problem for me.

And that was our arrangement.

Now, if I tried to calculate the value of everything, it would become ridiculous. How much was the rust protection? How much was Andreas’s time? What should I pay for the work? And what is an afternoon talking about childhood worth?

Andreas was not asking me for money. He had enjoyed helping me, and we had enjoyed our time together.

I wanted to thank him with something we could all enjoy.

A dinner seemed much better than trying to put a price on our friendship.

Two Euros and Fifty Cents.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I spend money without thinking.

I am an electrician, and I like understanding how things work. If a machine breaks, my first idea is not to buy another one. My first idea is to find out what is wrong.

Recently, our coffee machine developed a problem.

When I switched it on, I heard a little strange noise coming from the switch. So I opened it and looked inside. The electrical contacts were damaged. They had burned, and the switch was no longer working correctly.

I found a replacement and repaired the machine.

The new switch cost two euros and fifty cents.

Two euros and fifty cents!

Ira was delighted. She reminded me that I had also repaired a washing machine for her parents. They had been thinking about buying a new one, but I had taken the machine apart, removed the motor and discovered that the carbon brushes were worn out. I ordered replacements, fitted them, put everything back together, and the washing machine worked again.

For me, that is normal. I understand electricity, and I enjoy repairing things.

For Ira, it was another reason to be happy with her husband.

We even talked about the possibility of celebrating the money saved with a good dinner. I thought that was a very nice idea.

You see, I am perfectly happy to pay for good food and an enjoyable evening. But why should I buy a new coffee machine when a switch for €2.50 can solve the problem?

There are different ways to get good value from money.

Three Helpings of Salad.

Last weekend, we had a barbecue with friends in Bremerhaven.

Our group even has a WhatsApp name: Grillen mit Freunden. Barbecuing with friends. That tells you quite a lot about us already.

Normally, when I talk about a barbecue, I talk about meat. I love preparing a beautiful beef fillet, cutting away the silver skin with my special flexible knife, preparing the seasoning, and working at the grill. For me, preparing meat is almost like a little holiday. I become relaxed.

But this time, one of the most interesting things on the table was not meat at all.

Our friend Petra had made a quinoa salad with chickpeas, cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, rocket and feta cheese. She had a special dressing with mustard, olive oil, honey, garlic, gherkins and dill. Everything was mixed together into a wonderful vinaigrette.

It was fantastic.

I took one helping. Then another.

Everybody was enjoying the food, and our friends had also prepared some very good meat on the barbecue. I ate that too, of course.

But I kept coming back to the salad.

At the end, Petra asked whether everybody had finished eating.

Everybody said yes.

Except me.

I said, “No, wait a moment. I must take another spoonful.”

That was my third helping.

Now, you could ask whether it is polite to take three helpings of somebody’s salad. Perhaps somebody might think I was being greedy.

But I didn’t see it that way. The salad was so good that I simply wanted more.

And Petra was happy.

She had been a little unsure whether the recipe would suit our tastes. It was something different from what we normally eat together, and she wanted to know whether we liked it.

Well, I think three helpings gave her a very clear answer.

I liked it so much that I got the recipe and made the salad myself at home. I also wanted to prepare it again for our next little trip in the motorhome, when we would be spending time with friends beside the River Elbe.

That is another lovely thing about cooking together. Somebody brings a new recipe, everybody tries it, and suddenly you have something new to make in your own kitchen.

There was no restaurant bill involved. No waiter, no expensive fish, no discussion about who should pay.

Just a table with friends, good food, and somebody who was pleased that her cooking had made other people happy.

When I think about all these experiences, I cannot say that money is unimportant. Of course it is important. A good meal costs money, good ingredients cost money, and I know the difference between two euros and fifty cents and a restaurant bill of 120 euros.

But the price alone doesn’t tell me whether something was worthwhile.

I can remember an expensive evening in Gran Canaria when the sunset was perfect and I still left disappointed. I can remember an afternoon with Andreas when he wanted nothing more than the pleasure of spending time together. And I can remember a wonderful salad that made me go back to the table three times.

I don’t know exactly how much the ingredients for Petra’s salad cost.

I only know that I wanted another spoonful.

And for the person who made it, perhaps that was the nicest payment of all.