Vibes at a restaurant aren’t important, food is. Vibes are what you create it.

You’re telling me you feel exactly the same at a waterfront restaurant with live music as you do in a church basement looking place? Vibes are not just what you make them. They’re also everything surrounding you. Yes, obviously the food matters. But I’d rather have good foo...

Vibes are the tie breaker. I know a lot of places with good food, so I pick the one with best vibes.

Looks like someone got a bad review on their restaurant.

Take the upvote for the unpopular opinion. I don't want to sit in a place with a McDonald's atmosphere even if the food happened to be upscale and to my taste.  Bad food is sort of unforgivable, I'm not going there for vibes if I hate the food. But you need both.

You can't tell me you can will a vibe to be the same for both a McDonalds downtown in a city and a high end restaurant. I just don't believe you actually think that.

The premise here is a little silly, no? This only makes sense if the primary goal of a restaurant visit is *always* the culinary experience. But if I’m catching up with my friends, I’ll happily take a socially conducive “vibe” at the expense of mediocre food.

.... no idea who is saying vibes are more important than the food ngl

I'd rather eat at a restaurant with chipped furniture, a hole in the wall and a TV stuck on a blue screen. Food is typically better and fairly priced compared to a place with artwork and a curated playlist

Agreed. Whenever influencers and younger crews say a place is great, they talking about vibes. The best food is usually in places that look drab and don't do any fancy tricks to charge you extra money

If vibes are bad but the food is good, then I am ordering takeout. If you actually want people populating the space you paid/rent, then vibes matter. If you are a no table restaurant, then sure, skimp on vibes.

Nope. If I walk into a place with fluorescent lights and a wafting grease trap, my mood about the food will become negative. In fact, I'd guess they microwave steak too.

Less important does not equal unimportant. The best food in the region served in a too-dark room with a loud constant screeching sound would be a bad experience.

If the food is great but the vibe is terrible, my enjoyment of the experience evens out to still be pretty bad. If the food was bad but the vibe and environment was great, my experience evens out to still being pretty great and fun.

Vibes are definitely important for a restaurant, but to be fair, I wouldn't expect someone who microwaves steak to value it very highly.

It's a toss up. I've had great food at places with a terrible vibe, and I've also had terrible food at places with a great vibe. However, since I'm going to a restaurant for the food (obviously), I'd glady take a 70/30 split in favour of good food. Vibes are awesome, but I'...

Food is what gets people to come, vibes are what gets you to have regulars.

This is more of a Eating Alone vs Eating with Friends situation.

At the end of the day people go to restaurants for the food good vibes can’t really save a bad meal

This sub always feels like an argument people don’t want to have with their significant other. Never cared about vibes. I go to restaurants to eat.

IME restaurant vibes largely consist of hard surfaces and excruciatingly loud music, which is why everyone orders in these days.

It’s a balancing act. I wouldn’t say that neither are important, nor are they mutually exclusive. When I lived in SF, I frequented this tiny narrow Italian restaurant with a rude (lovingly rude, after a while) waiter. It just nailed pasta so well. I didn’t even know I particu...

So eating at the strip club is the same as anywhere else.

Gonna have to downvote because I agree. Restaurants with "good vibes" are trying to sell you cheap, plain food at a massive markup and are designed to attract boring picky eaters. The best food I've ever eaten was Ethiopian food in a neighborhood where I felt like I was goin...

It’s a mixed bag to me. I really do like good vibes, but tbh I think vibes also inflate the food price. Not much point in going to a place with good vibes if I can’t afford to eat the food there. I live in the DC area and goddamn near EVERY restaurant here has excessive vibes...

Don't care how good the food is... if they're blasting shitty auto-tune vocal commercial EDM through the speakers like so many places these days, chances are low I will ever return.

Someone leads you to a warehouse with fold out tables and chairs, and one big spotlight beaming down on the area, and some cheap Bluetooth speaker blasting music from the other side of the building. Someone then leads you to an actual restaurant which has a good atmosphere, a...

Food is the *most* important but vibes are not “unimportant”. Eating out is an experience, and vibes are part of the experience Same as a movie theater. The actual film and whether it is good or bad is the most important thing, but your seat (like if it’s sold out and now yo...

I care more about the vibes than the food. The food is baseline. The vibe makes it romantic. And most of the vibe is lighting. Like yeah I’m gonna be romantic if I want to, and I can do that under the fluorescent lights at a fast food spot, but it’s more fun under low light ...

True a degree. Good food will bring me in to eat sure, yes. However - Me being comfortable eating there is what gets me to come back. If I don’t like being where I’m eating, I might sing the praises of the meal… but that’s a one time deal.

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I play the vibes, and dont think they are overblown at all. If anything, they are underappreciated.

Thats like saying the smell of your food doesn't matter, only the taste. Eating at a restaurant is an experience, not just a meal.

The unpopular opinion is your username not the post

Yeah just serve me the damn food. I’m out of here in a few minutes anyways.

It’s true you can’t make up for bad food but a bad vibe can certainly ruin good food or maybe you’ve never dined in a place where the smell coming out of the bathroom is overwhelming and the wait staff act like they don’t care about anything

Clearly you’ve never been to Rainforest Cafe

That's... not true at all, lol.

Vibes matter, but they are second to food.

For me it's about quality customer service and food but both of those seem to be going down the toilet yet coming from Miami fl they charge an arm and leg for the "experience " plus whatever other stupid fee they decide you'll pay and still expect big tips

Everything ads up. Plenty of places are about as good as each other. Sometimes I want nice food but don't want to have to dress up for it. Sometimes it's just a dead atmosphere that somehow affects your own conversation. Sometimes the place is dark and dingy...the food can be ...

What if you replaced the word ‘vibes’ with ‘atmosphere’? You can’t create your own atmosphere, it’s a cumulative thing of everyone and everything happening in the space.

Why not both?

Both are important

Well your username checks out. 🤣

If you mean you don’t mind hole in the wall family owned type places that prioritize food? If so most people love that and it has a good vibe of its own. But if the vibe is straight up bad like, bad lighting bad music ugly decor but the food is good I’ll just go somewhere else

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by vibes, but I've eaten at places that were loud, dirty, crowded, etc that it detracted from the food.

Respectfully, the vibes at a restaurant are just as important, if not more important than the food… obviously the food is the focus and needs to be consistently good, but going out to eat is about the experience. The vibes of the design, decor, staff, and other patrons are a m...

Food, calm, company and service are the most important, and these things are subjective. I enjoy good food in any restaurant that is relatively silent, with ony a few people as company. Theme is irrelevant, and large tables with 10+ people where everyone is grasping for atten...

I feel like people who routinely talk about "vibes" are best ignored.

If I go into some grungy place I’m going to assume the food is same

I'm upvoting just for the stupid use of "vibes"

I can have good food at home by cooking or ordering delivery. If I am going out, I want an experience, and “vibes” are a big part of that.

Vibes get you in the door. The food keeps you there and gets you to come back. I've been to hole in the wall restaurants that look like shit and have amazing food. Know what happens? They close.

I fucking hate the word *vibe*. So much.

As long as the atmosphere is even reasonably nice, you’re 100% right. You and the people your with make the vibe.

Vibes do matter. If their music is too loud, I'm out

Vibes are what you make them for example, if you went to a casual place, you expect a casual atmosphere. If you went to a biker bar, you expect a different crowd, so if you go there, you are there for a reason and know what you are looking for.

I don’t know… There was an Italian place near us that used to play gangster rap, run disco lights, and host wwe style wrestling events on the patio The baked ziti wasn’t anywhere near good enough to overcome that vibe.

If a restaurant uses cheap wayfair/amazon balsawood furniture, it's guaranteed they use cheap-ass, old meat.

I think it depends. Like you can go to a restaurant just on vibes and then maybe the food will be good. But at the same time I feel that vibes also impact a lot on the experience. If the food is sublime but the vibe is ass I'm not going back lol

I might be in the minority but I actually like the vibe of a McDonalds way more than any high class restaurant I’ve been to. The casualness, shitty music, no waiters etc makes the vibe perfect for working on homework or causal conversation

I mean would you want to eat a meal in a nightclub?

Good vibes will never make up for bad food, but bad vibes can definitely ruin good food at a certain point.

Upvote for the unpopular opinion. I don't think most people go to restaurants where they think the food is shitty though.

You say that until you go to a really disgusting restaurant with a borderline hostile environment

Bad food kills the vibe but bad vibes makes the food less enjoyable.

Mostly agree but I don’t want it to be too loud and obnoxious either.

For me, if I walk in and it's empty and I'm not made to feel welcome there I'll usually walk right out.

90% food, 10% lighting/volume

Vibes and ambiance are just as important as the food....a lot of places lack one or the other....some get it just right....I'll visit a place for the ambiance before I visit for the food....I can always have a drink or two enjoy the ambiance/vibe then grab food somewhere else

IDK.  Some places have good enough food, but I'm not eating in.

If there are two identical restaurants, except one of them is playing country music over their speakers and the other is playing nothing, I'm picking the one playing nothing.

Horrific take

Disagree. I think vibes are equally important because it speaks to personality. I prefer a family owned Italian place where you feel like you're eating in someone's family kitchen over some "Look we're in Italy" chain or "Look this is fine dining" suit and tie place.

Going out to eat is just as much about the vibes as it is the food

No. The atmosphere of a restaurant can make up for half-decent food. If you are just looking for food as an ends to a means then that's on you, but if I'm going on a date, the "vibes" do matter.

If the staff are all dicks to each other and the customers then that is certainly not an issue of “what you make of it” Also if the restaurant is dirty as fuck

Well it really depends in why you go to a restaurant. The thing is, most restaurants are either very expensive and have insanly good food, or they are decently priced and offer food that I could make myself, too. If I seek out places to discover new food, yeah Id agree that t...

I love burgers. Some time ago i've saw a new burgerplace in my city but i won't step in no matter what. Why? The vibe. It's sterile and cold, unwelcoming. White and gray walls, black counter, black tables and chairs, white light, no decorations, flower pots or pictures on wall...

Okay so youre saying if I serve gourmet food ourt of a dog bowl you wouldn't find that weird?

agreed. food is the only reason we even *have* restaurants. they copyrighted it, and we cant make it at home.

To be honest the best experiences I've had at restaurants wasn't based on the food as long as there's nothing wrong with it. Vibes are what make you remember it.

Vibes, and I'm not saying luxury vibes is what makes you go from outdoor to the table and come back if the food is good but not exceptional.

Vibes are important, food is just more important.

Both.

Vibes are the initial appeal to a restaurant. The food keeps one coming back.

You're obviously objective. Most people are gullible. It's why the scheme effectively fools enough people to become profitable enough to be a business trend. When (most) people feel or think they should feel impressed, they pay the higher price.

This isn't an opinion, it's just wrong

I agree 100%. Me and my boys have a great time whether it’s getting a simple coffee at Dunkin or going to Korean BBQ. Bad food is unforgettable and that ruins the night more than anything else.

Absolutely. Food gets me to a restaurant in spite of their vibe, and a vibe is what makes me choose one restaurant over another when the food quality is similar. I don't pay for vibe.