What type of food do you find it easier to make better at home than you can eat

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Usually it's breakfast foods for me. I enjoy cooking breakfast type meals and feel that my meals are better than most restaurants you go to eat breakfast out.

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50 rednecks standing in line at IHOP at 9:00 on a Tuesday morning, about to fork over $10.00 for eggs and pancakes would argue with you.

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Jambalaya and Gumbo

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Yeah once you get these down you're going to do it better than what most restaurants put out IMO

At the risk of drawing the ire of the unwashed unbelievers, most everything save that which requires a particular skill set or equipment that I do not have. And the reason for this is actually quite simple. Few if any are going to go to the lengths that I am going to go to in order to get it spot on and next level, or legit. Even fewer are going to put the love and time into a dish as I will, but they aren't just cooking for me alone either. I am, and am not on a time schedule or multi tasking various other thing save my own dish in the kitchen. What I may lack in equipment however, I think I more than compensate for in attention to detail and doing it as textbook as can be done.

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unwashed unbelievers,

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This was funny. Not sure I got the rest of the book though...

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Usually it's breakfast foods for me.

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I agree. I can make grits better than Strawn's, the only thing I can't do better is pancakes. McDonald's has unbelieveable pancakes.

I don't like to pay too much for Italian or Mexican. Because I feel like it isn't anything I couldn't do at home.

Steaks are the best example. The steak I cook at my house on my gas grill tastes just as good as the $20 Outback or TGI Friday's steak.

Steak unless we are talking about a steakhouse that uses prime beef.

I always find that restaurants tend to overcook fish too.

Dude, the Jack Daniels NY Strip at TGI Friday's is legit. Best steak at any of the franchises IMHO. Sans the absurdly expensive steakhouse franchises.

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Yeah. I can't crank out food that is better than a 4 star restaurant but with a few iterations to get things down, I can usually get a dish tasting pretty top notch.

My general rule is I can usually make something pretty good after try 4 or 5

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I think pretty much anybody can. With the right technique, knowledge, and desire, it's not that difficult to at least match what's done in a restaurant, if not best it pretty regularly. The difference however in between us in our kitchens at home and a professional in a professional kitchen is that a professional is trying to pull off multiple dishes at the same time, get bozo the clown out of the weeds in his station, have to stop and wash a pan because nobody can seem to cook without dirtying every pan in the kitchen, and have to stop to find out "which one of you MFers has my chef's knife?"

Now true, I think you find there are things that make that easier in cooler space, prepping up prior to service, etc, but I don't think that just because many of us can and do cook better dishes than many if not most kitchens do that we would not all cave when put in the heat of the kitchen in the middle of service. That's when you sperate the amateur from the professional IMO.

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It's just that I think when you really desire to bang it out and apply yourself to getting it right, and practice sound technique, you're almost always going to put out better food than you can get at most every restaurant except places that practice some verry difficult cooking elements and specialized equipment that makes what you're trying to pull off quite difficult if not impossible.

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This I am finding more and more to be true. Mostly now we eat out for convenience and to not mess up my kitchen, not because the food will be better. I do sometimes like to go to places that make fresh tortillas and fresh guacamole just because I am too lazy to do it.