It's true that you can't buy a whole jackfruit at the grocery store in most of the US but I've always been able to find good restaurants of some variety with minimal effort. It's real hard to justify SF prices based on food options.
I often end up spending more for distinctly worse food in other American cities. It is sometimes hard to swallow paying premium prices for food and then immediately realizing after the first bite that the ingredients are subpar or there is more focus on making it Instagrammable than actually delicious
From that perspective, eating out in SF always felt like a good deal because for $15 you can get some truly exceptional farm to table food.
depends on your priorities. I would rather have nice restaurants than a nice apartment or house. I've lived in a culturally devoid suburb, where the options are fast food, or chain restaurants, and it affected my quality of life substantially.
No, and I think it's uncharitable to assume that's what the parent is suggesting.
But even if we expand the statement to "outside a major city" or even "outside a major metro area", I think a lot of places are culturally devoid suburbs (though I probably would have picked a nicer way of putting it).
I would wager that the majority of suburbs in the US don't have much variety in cuisine, and while communities will certainly have a few stand-out restaurants, there will also be a lot of mediocre fast food, fast casual, and pizza shops. I grew up in places like that, some of my family lives in places like that, and some friends who used to live in cities, but moved out for more space, also live in places like that.
Get too far outside Seattle, Portland, the SF bay area, greater LA, Chicago, Boston, NYC, DC, Austin, Dallas, Nashville, and even many smaller cities, and there really isn't much to write home about when it comes to food. And for some of those cities, "too far outside" can be as little as a half hour drive.
