Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any time I read someone saying something like that I internally replace the subject with food. "Why would anyone buy food professionally made at a restaurant when you could make something similar at home?" Because I want something nice and I'm willing to spend some cash to get it. C'mon..
Valid point. Counterexample by way of metaphor: I used to feel the same way about restaurant food, but then my cooking skills increased to the point where I can make most Italian or French food just as well as if not better than most restaurants I've been to. Now, I rarely if ever go out for French or Italian any more.
Aside from pommes-frites and crepes, finding French food at the bottom of the price scale is pretty difficult.
And I wonder why that's true. I mean, in Los Angeles, I can find food from other great culinary traditions at both the high end and the low end of the price scale: Korean, Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Indian, Peruvian, Vietnamese, Middle Eastern -- even Japanese, which, considering general price levels in Japan, is surprising.
But French food? It's almost always some high priced, sit-down place with a valet out front. There don't seem to be a lotta reasonably/low priced French food joints out there.
(Even stranger is the price of "British" food, usually found in pubs: always seems overpriced. And British is not exactly known as a great food tradition.)