Never been transported?

[Timo]

I don't know of any evidence that people wouldn't replicate Romulan ale. In TOS and the TOS movies, that's probably not yet feasible, so Kirk and McCoy brag on their smuggled goods. But in the TNG era, those who drink the stuff for its taste and intoxicating value are likely to replicate it. Certainly the replicators of the E-D were capable of producing exellent alcoholic beverages ("Up the Long Ladder"), even if some choosy drinkers sometimes complained.

There'd probably be people who'd drink Romulan ale for its illegality, though, and then replicated stuff wouldn't do.

No synthehol limitation on Starfleet ships, it seems: our heroes did indulge in what they described as genuine stuff (on their free time, of course). Say, Picard in "Relics", or Bashir and O'Brien in a couple of episodes. Or if that stuff was synthehol, it was indistinguishable from alcohol in basically every respect...

Any food prepared fresh and handmade takes a priority over replicated food as you can smell handmade and fresh food while it is cooking which is part of the sensual pleasure of eating.

Assuming the kitchen is close to the customer, a condition that is only met in VOY as far as starship crews are concerned. And even in VOY, the 150 people aboard don't all seem to be eating in the mess hall, or at least they don't eat there at the same time, despite Neelix not cooking constantly. So probably many still prefer replicated food, even when Janeway extracts "replication credits" for it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Longinus]

Would I!

Let me rephrase: it would not be a good idea if one wants to have a functional society.

 

[Anticitizen]

It's possible that the replicator, to save on energy costs, is more of a re-assembler of sorts. Rather than reconfiguring the matter on an atomic or molecular level, it may have a storage of pre-made proteins, sugars, acids, etc - the 'building blocks' of food - and just shoves it all together into configurations resembling actual food, like a recipe. Some cadence of the original could be lost in this process, like flavors that are a result of a chemical change that occurs during a prolonged cooking process. Take the definition of cheese for example:

"Cheese consists of proteins and fat from milk, usually the milk of cows, buffalo, goats, or sheep. It is produced by coagulation of the milk protein casein. Typically, the milk is acidified and addition of the enzyme rennet causes coagulation."

If the replicator's drawing its resources from an existing store of pre-fab ingredients of sorts, then it probably wouldn't be able to do things like make the casein protein coagulate in the 2 seconds the cheese is supposed to appear before you, so it delivers you something that tastes rather like cheese and has the major ingredients but probably isn't exact. Hence the idea that replicated food isn't quite the same as the real thing.