Foods where quality makes a HUGE difference

[testaaja]

Pizza. Crappy pizza is [censored].
Sausage, obviously.
Orange juice.

[cardsharkk04]

I pay extra for good cereal, beer, bread, cheese, and very important: Tortillas

[Blarg]

Agree on the bread, definitely. I'd also say wine. I'm among lots of people I know who wondered, What the heck is such a big deal about wine anyway? We had only been around swill previously.

[KneeCo]

Orange Juice
Beer
Bread
Fruit
Sandwich meats
Pasta sauce

I think foods where you can buy the non-brand name versions and not lose out would be a more interesting thread.

[Pudge714]

The fact that every type of food under the sun has been listed in this thread leads me to conclude,
Good food >>>>>> bad food.
I think the opposite thread would be more interesting or threads "Things you prefer even though you know they are lower quality"

[MrMon]

For meat, the lesser cuts are often better in taste than the more expensive ones. Most chefs know this, but the public doesn't. Ribeyes are way better than filet, but one of the best cuts is skirt steak, if you know how to prepare it. Hangar steak is another odd piece that is very good and favored by chefs, but almost unknown to the general public. Of course you want to get the best quality piece you can in any cut, a really old cow is going to be pretty awful, but don't be fooled into thinking the most expensive cuts are also the "best".

For fruit, fresh picked is almost always better for the simple reason most people think quality is appearance, and it's not. Some of the worst looking fruit in the world is also the tastiest, but because we insist on good looking fruit, they have to pick it way before it's ripe so that it can make it to the store intact, where it also has no taste becuase it didn't tree ripen. This is why homegrown anything is almost always better, you pick it when it's ripe, whereas the store does god knows what to make it look like it's ripe, but it realy isn't.

In general, there is a law of diminishing returns on any food. You get a pretty linear curve at the beginning, but at the top end, things get really expensive for minimal increases in quality. This is especially true for thing like wine, where once you pass the $50/bottle stage, the increase in quality is pretty marginal as you double price. You definitly don't double quality, instead you're buying scarcity. This was illustrated in the vodka threads, where it's repeated been shown that going from Popov to Rain/Fris is a big leap in quality for just a few dollars, while the leap from Rain/Fris to Grey Goose is minimal, if anything, but the price doubles.

[suzzer99]

I can't think of a bigger taste gap than good canned tuna vs. crappy canned tuna.

Any BBQ, and if you don't agree you've never had good BBQ.

Also gyros, shrimp cocktail, cheesecake, fried calamari are all foods that can mind-blowingly good if made form the highest quality stuff and barely tolerable if not.

[Alobar]

pussy

[guids]

Ya, thats a huge point, a filet is one of the tenderest cuts, but really, compared to a sirloin, there isnt all that much taste to it, on the flip side some people like their meat to cut like butter, others like the actual taste of the meat. when you get into aged meat, prime, etc that it gets a little more interesting.

[Blarg]

Margarita mix. Any pre-made drink mixes. Most are really horrible. Making the mixed drink from fresh ingredients is much better.