You're right in one respect: most renters are not just paying their landlord's mortgage but also covering or heavily subsidising the maintenance and rates/property-taxes payable on their home (the landlord's asset).

Your vapid restaurant analogy - of course - falls down as soon as you realise that many people, needing a place to live, have no other option but to rent, often because they've been priced out of the property market by landlords and other speculators. Their choice is not between renting and owning, but between renting and having nowhere to live. To repeat, for the hard-of-understanding: for many (if not most) renters there is no choice.

Framing it as a choice, made freely by all - as simple as choosing whether or not to eat out or cook at home - is obtuse, and insulting.