KEY POINTS:
We gobble through $13 million of food in restaurants, cafes and takeaways every day, but the dish we adore more and more is pizza.
New figures from the Restaurant Association reveal that takeaway pizza sales grew 24 per cent in the year to March, to $177 million.
The dominant sector of the industry remains restaurants and cafes - there are almost 7000 in the country, generating $3.6 billion in annual sales and employing almost 65,000 people, says the association's annual Food Service Facts.
But the charge of the pizza outlets, which have jumped 142 per cent in the past five years, has the nation's top chefs asking some tough questions:
* Have we lost our taste for fine food that has elevated home-grown chefs such as Peter Gordon into the international gourmet stratosphere?
* After a generation of exploratory dining, have our palates been dumbed down by global trends towards ever-faster food?
Certainly the takeaway pizza boom has been a trend in North America for most of this century, but that has been to the cost of hamburger and other fast-food outlets, not sit-down restaurants. Is pizza-to-go putting real pressure on cafs and casual restaurants, and is its influence being felt all the way to the best white tablecloth establishments?
Not according to Tony Adcock, proprietor of Harbourside Restaurant and a fish cafe and takeaway.
"The increase in pizza sales is related to price. A takeaway pizza costs less now than when there was just Pizza Hut, because there is a lot more competition.
"That is having an impact on other takeaways, but it is also encouraging busy people to cook less and buy in ready-to-eat meals.
"Pizza takeaways are growing the market, which may have an impact on some suburban cafs, but really the squeeze is that there are now so many cafes. Every new development is full of them."
Customers too careful with their money and too many cafes - these sound like the timeless complaints of restaurateurs, just like farmers always complain about the weather.
But like the farmers, restaurants are a critical part of the economy. With food service industry sales closing in on $5 billion a year and its workforce of 81,000 almost 5 per cent of the national total, the sector is no longer just a metropolitan indulgence.
With the number of restaurants and cafes up 20 per cent since 2003, dining out is hardly in crisis, but there is growing concern among restaurateurs that profitability is being squeezed by increasing costs and a low ceiling on what they can charge.
Stephen Morris, of Wellington's Copita, said there was not enough differential for restaurants ready to put in extra skills and quality materials.
"I had steak and chips in a caf in Waiouru the other day for $30. You would think we [Copita] should be able to charge more than $36 for eye fillet and full service, but we can't."
Mr Morris said one Wellington restaurant charging $40 for mains had people muttering about its prices.
"People expect the best for less than they once did. Top-quality restaurants are doing their job for smaller returns. And that will stop unless diners are prepared to pay more."
Mr Adcock agreed people's expectations of ordinary cafes and bars and top-end restaurants were an issue.
"People expect the best in service and food but they don't expect to pay for it. But in a cafe they are happy to pay almost the same price and get no service at all.
"The problem is restaurants will stop trying to be the best they can if they can't sustain it, and that will be bad news for tourism and for our food exports. Tourists take away an impression of food quality that relates to the image of our products in export markets."
Even at the takeaway level, it did not make sense, said Mr Adcock.
"People are prepared to pay $15 for a pizza costing less than $1, but won't fork out $7 for a fillet of snapper. If customers can't value quality, food service operators will stop offering it. Maybe customers can't afford it, but the increasing sale of pizzas suggests they can.
"It's time for the $50 main."
* Keith Stewart is an Auckland food and wine writer
