Why On Earth Do People Go Out For a Meal?

[Richard Tarleton]

The late AA Gill said (I paraphrase) the best restaurant in the world is the one local to you where you go regularly, you know the staff by name and they you, they're pleased to see you and (of course) the food is good. Ours (a country pub) comes complete with chef who's worked in a Michelin-starred kitchen but escaped the pressure, we eat there as often as we feel like (it's not that expensive), often on a whim, and it is always a pleasure. Our next visit will be with close family - one night I sall cook for them at home, Rick Stein to hand, the other we shall go there so that I can concentrate entirely on enjoying their company with no washing up, in the assurance of excellent food and a warm welcome. I can't imagine life without eating out.

In answer to Pet's query (above), how about: place on the table a leather-bound notebook and expensive fountain pen, in which you make the occasional note. Could be anything - notes for your autobiography, musical ideas, you could be a restaurant critic....it'll keep them guessing. It will mean you can relax and take in your surroundings. Just don't leave it on the table when you go to the loo.

[ahinton]

I think that the OP's bizarre question has been answered with more thoroughness than is usual here and a number of contributors to this strange thread have made some excellent points, not least the game-set-and-match answers provided by Richard B which illustrate perfectly what I suspect many of us here already knew, namely that there's a myriad of legitimate reasons for going out for a meal.

[MrGongGong]

I think that the OP's bizarre question has been answered with more thoroughness than is usual here and a number of contributors to this strange thread have made some excellent points, not least the game-set-and-match answers provided by Richard B which illustrate perfectly what I suspect many of us here already knew, namely that there's a myriad of legitimate reasons for going out for a meal.

I think you are after what Zoe is having

[vinteuil]

place on the table a leather-bound notebook and expensive fountain pen, in which you make the occasional note. Could be anything - notes for your autobiography, musical ideas, you could be a restaurant critic....it'll keep them guessing. It will mean you can relax and take in your surroundings...

You have been observing me attentively, RT!


Also - restaurants are perhaps one of the few good things to come out of the French Revolution - all them chefs chucked out on to the streets when their aristo employers were taken off to the guillotine, forced to find alternative employment by opening places to serve the new bourgeoisie...

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[ahinton]

I think you are after what Zoe is having

Erm - care to explain that one?...

[vinteuil]

Erm - care to explain that one?...

...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-bsf2x-aeE

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[Richard Barrett]

You have been observing me attentively, RT!

Me too, although my notebook isn't leatherbound and I left fountain pens behind on leaving school (the fact that they're not obligatory any more has been a great leap forward for the education system if you ask me). Reading is also good, although you might have to commandeer a plate from the other side of the table to hold the book open. Reading news articles on my phone is something I'm occasionally prone to, but I would rarely get out the laptop unless there's a lot of empty space.

[MrGongGong]

Erm - care to explain that one?...

Wrong Mr Hinton I think

http://ohemmabjorg.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/kabaret.html

But this was mentioned on Stalkerbook

[vinteuil]

. Reading is also good, although you might have to commandeer a plate from the other side of the table to hold the book open.

... I am so established in my routines as a solitary diner that I have a selection of tomes ideal for the purpose - they must be small enuff to fit in jacket pocket, able to fall open on the page without requiring use of additional plate / fork (penguins etc are useless - ideal are small 1920s macmillan hardbacks - the short stories of 'Tchehov', Turgenev, Henry James etc) - but they must also be the sort of books which you can dip into a para at a time without losing the thread. Actually Henry James not so good here; a perfect vol was Gissing's 'The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft' - I think French Frank and I have shared our enthusiasm for this as a dining-table book here before....


- aha, found it :

Re The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, Constable pocket edition

Am51

Yours must be the reprint of February 1912. Mine is September 1926. These are all the same edition but, as at Sept 1926, there had been 17 reprints after the original publication in January 1903.

It just shows what a cultured reading public there once was. Given that if a passenger had picked up my book, they only had to hand it to the driver on their way off the bus, I really had very high hopes that it would have ended up in the lost property office - as it did. Now, if it had been a Stieg Larsson ...

TPPoHR is a wonderful volume to have in your pocket to dip into when waiting - and that's exactly why I took it to the pub yesterday (I always have to wait for my friend because I live much further away). My friend was once in the secondhand book trade and we discussed it, the paper, the clarity of the printing, the sturdiness of the binding, the sheer pleasure of holding it and turning over the pages ... and that for what was, at the time, quite obviously an everyman's edition. Imagine! seventeen reprints in little over 20 years (none between March 1914 and October 1918)!

Good Lord - in August 2011 I was harpin' on the same theme -

["Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft"]... possibly the Constable edn of 1928, of which The Observer at the time wrote "The books are singularly attractive in format, of the handy pocket size, and printed in a large and clear type..." - and The Manchester Guardian "... printed in good, clear type tastefully bound... " - and The Guardian "... The type is clear, the paper good, and the whole format remarkable elegant... "

I picked up a copy for 50p. It is in my pile of books from which I select a volume when dining alone at restaurants - slim enough to fit in a jacket pocket, and in a format which lies flat on a table without needing extra cutlery to keep the pages lying down - and of a style where you can profitably read a few pages before tucking in to the next course or consulting with the sommelier. I also use Chekhov short stories in Constance Garnett's transl, Chatto & Windus pocket edn; Henry James short stories in the Macmillan pocket edn; an old battered Pléiade Montaigne...

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[Richard Barrett]

... I am so established in my routines as a solitary diner that I have a selection of tomes ideal for the purpose

I see. That is an admirable routine indeed. With me it's whatever book I happen to be involved with at the time, largely because my solitary dining-out takes place almost exclusively when travelling, with limited scope for bringing along a portable library.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Reading is also good, although you might have to commandeer a plate from the other side of the table to hold the book open.

Oh! I never read (or chat) whilst I'm eating. (I'm with Montalbano with this.) Before/after/between courses - not during - for me.

[french frank]

The most obvious answer to the question is : Because they find it enjoyable for a number of reasons. If you don't enjoy it - don't do it.

Unlike me today I left wine in my glass and food on my plate, my Korean cafe has closed down, my neighbourhood Italian reopens tomorrow and didn't have anything prepared. So I went to a café bar serving tapas where I was panicked into ordering food I didn't really fancy and the noise level was appalling - people talking very loudly to make themselves heard over the music, punctuated by several young babies suddenly going Ya-ya-ya-ya-ya quite incomprehensibly - and for no good reason.

Who needs antiques as a reason? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-41100226 Full marks - in this country, at any rate.

Food I would never cook for myself at home and a quiet relaxing ambiance are two reasons for eating out; working too long and not leaving enough time to get myself a meal is another. Raymond Blanc's savoury pithivier of pheasant is not something you conjure up from what you find in the fridge.

[Richard Barrett]

Oh! I never read (...) whilst I'm eating.

Really? For me the whole point is not to let eating get in the way of reading.

[Stanfordian]

It costs five times as much as it would do at home and is always average. The only reason they get away with it is that people see it as a mechanism for socializing on the grounds that they can't socialize without a mechanism. The best meals out I have had in the past ten years have been cheap picnics in the outdoors produced for me. Hardly anyone does that now.

Hiya Lat-Literal,

Does that apply to people not on earth?

[jean]

Oh! I never read (or chat) whilst I'm eating. (I'm with Montalbano with this.)...

(Do you similarly get regularly interrupted by news of a murder which must take precedence?)