As far as I’m concerned, several people who aren’t reporting on meals at a restaurant talking about how they’re not going to eat there because they can’t afford it is off-topic.
It sucks that prices have gone up so much faster than most people’s incomes, but if you can’t afford to eat at Saffy’s, there are few if any comparable restaurants you can afford. It’s not a distinguishing feature of Saffy’s, so not relevant to that discussion.
Now you’re being a jerk with your wording and I can’t tell if you’re doing it on purpose. No one’s saying they “can’t afford it” they were expressing preference or value of that restaurant based on its increasing prices that seem quite higher than the rate of inflation at other restaurants. Extremely judgy, mean thing to say. “Go eat at this restaurant instead, if you’re poor.”
Everywhere’s price increased but not every place has increased by 40% in some instances. So, it is a distinguishing feature of Saffy’s and you are not responding to the fact that the conversation spurred from an initial one about Saffy’s and that other users are interested in continuing the chat.
I’ve seen you keep more egregious things in threads than the way you’re policing this.
It’s not your judgment that matters here.
Saffy’s is always packed. Should the owners lower their prices anyway? Do the owners not deserve a financial reward for making a great restaurant everyone wants to go to? Alternatively, should the owners spread the excess profits among all their employees instead of lowering prices?
dunsmoor same time period
| scallop | 9 | 19 | 111.1111111 |
|---|---|---|---|
| albacore | 11 | 21 | 90.90909091 |
| cornbread | 11 | 21 | 90.90909091 |
| chopped liver | 11 | 17 | 54.54545455 |
| chili | 17 | 27 | 58.82352941 |
| pork chop | 37 | 65 | 75.67567568 |
| ribeye | 79 | 149 | 88.60759494 |
Or Titos Tacos over the same time period! It’s not just high end restaurants
Meat’s gone up for everyone, even to cook at home. Especially beef.
It’s interesting places like Baroo have only gone from like 110 to 125 compared to some of the other skyrocket prices.
Dunsmoor was the other than came to mind.
@PeonyWarrior I don’t have an issue with them making profits and I don’t think it’s not worth the cost for the record. Just that the rate at which things have gone up snuck up on me in a way that starts to teeter on not worth it as much as I used to go to a place in the Saffy’s range once a week.
and just like that, this thread has flickered out, just like nobody predicted …
Deleted comments everywhere with no thread cohesion and heavy handed moderation I wonder why lol
The results of my approach to moderation speak for themselves. Moving inappropriate digressions (in this case, quite sourly promoting the false impression that Saffy’s is somehow an outlier in price increases) to topics like this helps keep this board focused on eating good food without the usual social-media unpleasantness.
I would posit that your definition of “unpleasantness” and “sourly” and “false impression” are severely out of step with the vast majority of this board. The conversation was none of those things, perhaps until the heavy handed moderation commenced.
Yeah no one was being unpleasant, we were having a perfectly civil discussion because price is relevant to our discussion and reception of food.
And if the price changes weren’t remarkable (compared to other places) no one would’ve brought them up. Yes there are a few places with similar or bigger increases. No one was promoting anything “sour” and I struggle to see how it was “inappropriate” or different than conversations we’ve had about…decline in a place’s quality or different opinions on how we’ve enjoyed a restaurant.
You ask us to give feedback and when we do it seems you do not internalize it and only fight it.
“quite sourly promoting” is a wild turn of phrase in this context. I often struggle to see the vision of this place that you’re holding in your head for what it “should” be, but I’m always grateful to the robust discussions and opinions the members create.
It’s not a democracy, maybe shouldn’t be, and while I generally appreciate your moderation, in this instance the risk of social media degradation or some tragedy of the commons is outweighed by the benefits of an active discussion, the purpose of this place.
Observable and substantiated that these conversations are livelier on the LA part of this forum than when siloed mid convo into restaurant or other meta, categories people don’t check.
You could split the baby and recategorize once things peter out. I don’t think it would risk the usual social media bs.
Prior to all this movement on the threads, I was actually going to post that I changed my reservation from Saffys and decided to go to ruen pair instead with friends based solely on the menu prices
I’m gonna have to respectfully disagree with y’all on this one. No question in my mind that splitting this discussion has reduced the amount of engagement and visibility and that is a negative consequence of a reasonable moderation action. IMO how reasonable the discussion is it not the big factor. What does matter is how relevant the discussion is to Saffy’s over the long term.
Whether we agree or not, my interpretation of Robert’s moderation philosophy is not just to quarantine disruptive posters and the conversations they spawn, it’s also to curate and prune threads to keep the overall discussion focused and this seems consistent with that.
Look at all our restaurant specific discussions, most of them have been going on as long as the restaurant has been open. Considering FTC has been going since Sept 2015, that could be almost a decade for a successful restaurant. When you consider a time scale of years, discussion on the current pricing of the restaurant and current macroeconomic factors causing changes in pricing is not really going to be that meaningful to someone looking at this next year or five years. Either Saffy’s will have proven to be pricing correctly for their market, they will have had to change to adapt, they’ll have gone out of business, etc.
What will still be relevant is our discussion of the food and the evolution of the restaurant’s cuisine. E.g. the library of Hayato posts from Porkybelly and others chronicling the evolution of Brandon’s food and experience.
It sucks that moving this interesting discussion that happened organically will cause it to peter out, but IMO it is off-topic, just like griping about the difficulty of obtaining a Hayato reservation 
There is, of course, no obviously correct/incorrect boundary for when something should split off the main discussion and ultimately there is a large element of moderator judgement.
That’s a fair response - I would argue the evolution of a restaurant also can encompass its pricing. I think most of this thread wouldn’t have happened without the over moderation and we would have naturally returned to talking about the food if you zoomed out in the full Saffy’s thread in the next 5 years of the restaurant’s lifespan. This forum has an acute sense of value for price and also the difficulty of running a restaurant and the factors that go into pricing so it is not simply “ew it’s expensive now” but was trying to get to a deeper conversation that could be additive to the discussion about the food.
I think it’s easy to see this whole thread now with its 25 posts about moderation and say it would be negatively impactful to the original conversation but the argument we’re making is it would not have been had it not been over moderated - and perhaps would have even found its way back to another interesting conversation related to Saffy’s for more people to engage with.
It also doesn’t consider a reader’s agency in the matter - we should have the ability to self moderate (as long as we are being respectful and decent) our reading habits and should you want to focus on pictures and reviews - go for it! Like I said there have been less interesting and relevant digressions that have not been exiled.
I mean, you can still post (you did) and it’s very relevant to this tread vs. the Saffy’s one even though it was what was used as a an.
That is a discussion we are often having as we know friends who are having a harder time than we are. So more than anything when opting to dine out with friends, we are scouring menus more and opting for more casual and lower pressure locations, like at Mercado la Paloma or walk up and order places. If a couple decides to split an All’ Antico sandwich or get two varieties of sushi at Yama vs. three.. It’s their business and no pressure at the end of of the meal check presentation.
I know for me, I’ve always been a fan of more casual spots (if the world was littered with pick up windows, I would be a happy person) and on my recent vacation back east… I went on a chowder tour and opted for more order pick up places than more sit down places because I didn’t want to be that person who was just having a tiny ticket. Even being solo, the pressure to turn the table for a ‘better’ customer in popular places are more than ever. 
Saffy’s onliine menu has prices so anyone can look at it and decide for themselves whether it fits their budget or whatever other criteria make them unwilling to pay X for Y.
Any thread by people who haven’t eaten at a restaurant recently or at all discussing how they’re not going to eat there because of the prices does not belong in a topic about that specific restaurant.
I don’t actually split off threads very often. Typically it’s repeat offenders leading me to do it, people who aren’t flouting the terms of service enough to justify a time-out but still derailing topics through their bad posting habits.