Risa

I always saw the "real food is better" attitude exists as either a hipster thing or simply because recipe they prefer just doesnt exist in the database. In TNG we see people from the past try repilcated food and absolutely love it.

So (hipsters aside) a home cook would also be more likely to have some minor variance in their meal while the replicated version would be identical on each plate every single time. I imagine the heterogeneity may be part of the appeal of human prepared meals. The replicator also may have grandma's beloved secret recipe, but not your grandma's secret recipe.

This is true, but also it's implied in technobabble that replicators operate on a lower "molecular" resolution whereas transporters operate on a quantum scale. I rationalize this as a space saving measure; when you're transporting living organisms, you need perfect precision, and thus a full pattern buffer worth of resolution. This is clearly expensive to store, so much so that it decays over time unless you do something tricky.

Replicators use a lower resolution scan, as you can just reassemble protein molecules into the right shape most of the time. Eddington complains about this issue. (The non-canon TNG technical manual mentions tanks full of protein sludge used for replicators.) Now, is this actually detectable by a human palate? Eh, maybe.

I imagine if you were to beam a plate of non-replicated food though, the full flavor profile wouldn't be lost. It's specifically the low resolution of the replicator tech.