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"  Your entr\u00E9e of a simple spaghetti carbonara may be half the cost of your date&amp;#039;s filet mignon, but your dining companion is the one getting the real deal. Forbes took a look at where restaurants are ripping you off and where you&amp;#039;re getting the greater deal. It turns out that shelling out a few more bucks could sometimes be the better bargain. More from Delish: 11 Healthy Dinners on a Budget According to Forbes, simple, easily made and sourced foods like pasta, chicken, and rice are where restaurants actually make a bulk of their profit. Labor-intensive and time-consuming dishes with ingredients that are harder to find are where you&amp;#039;ll find the better buy. Beef, for example, costs the restaurant about half the menu price to source and prepare while pasta costs only a tiny fraction of the menu price to make. More from Delish: Over the Top Expensive Cocktails Another tip is to examine the seafood description closely. A restaurant knows that it can charge more for a dish made with a $1.50 worth of shrimp than it can for a $1.50 worth of chicken. People value shrimp higher. But shrimp come in many forms. While there are many varieties of the shellfish unavailable to the layman and therefore worth investing in at a restaurant, there are also ultra-cheap versions that should be eschewed. More from Delish: Quick and Cheap Dinner Recipes A good general rule from restaurant consultant Clark Wolf is: &amp;quot;If you can whip it up yourself in 20 minutes with stuff from your kitchen cupboard-do that.&amp;quot; So with that in mind, here are a few delicious recipes for you to make at home rather than shell out for in a restaurant. Easy Homemade Dinners That Taste Gourmet        Elegantly Simple Pasta Recipes      Restaurant-Inspired Chicken Recipes      Best Restaurant Dishes for $12 or Less     "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.delish.com/food/news/a38811/menu-items-restaurants-make-money-on-and-where-you-get-the-best-bargain/>