[lotsofpulp]

Seattle real estate is some of the most desirable in the world. It very well could be that owning (and renting) land there could be so expensive, that food service workers having a higher pay to QoL ratio means eating out is “unaffordable” for most people in the Seattle area (under current quantities of housing).

I put “unaffordable” in quotes because eating out is easily replaced by eating at home, or eating frozen dinners, etc, so restaurants do not have the pricing power they might need to allow the food service workers to have decent pay to QoL ratio in a place like Seattle.

[uoaei]

I think you are missing the point.

The other commenter is not confused about why things are the way they are. They understand these things already, obviously they think about it a lot. You explain it, they agree that things are that way due to the reasons you describe, but that does not explain why the disparity ought to exist.

[lotsofpulp]

Sorry, my original intent was to inform that they were not experiencing cognitive dissonance, as typically defined.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance