Why do you eat at full-service restaurants?

To have someone else cook, clean, and serve me. Sometimes I also am very much looking forward to the ambiance in a restaurant. Might be Al Fresco dining among the many or by the shore. Might be very elegant indoor dining. Might be a family owned joint where the owner is there talking to the patrons. Depends on my mood. I also like that it feels like a date with my husband. I prefer to go out for food I don’t make at home, or don’t make very well anyway. In that way eating out might be about a craving I have and I am not able to prepare it myself.

I agree that when I host at home it can be too much preparation and worry. Eating out everything is done for you, and everyone can usually find something they like to eat. Although, you can always order in orbring food home for a small group.

Right now we are going through a heat spell, and full service restaurants have air conditioning. It is too hot to cook at home, so it works for us.
Of course, this isn’t the only reason, but right now it is the only thing I can think of.

I like the social aspect of eating out. Problems are set aside. We are sharing a meal (an experience). I just had a delightful dinner with an old friend who was in town for a conference and her friend who was a stranger to me and my husband.

@marinelife Yes, I like to think of dining out as “an experience” just as you mentioned. It’s more than merely consuming food.

I don’t like cooking or cleaning up aftewards, and I’m totally inept at making anything but the most basic dishes. So while I’m not crazy about paying restaurant prices, I enjoy the differet kinds of food I love and new kinds I couldn’t make at home if Wolfgang Puck himself coached me.

What @JLeslie. I want to go some place and sit down, and be waited on. I want someone else to cook. I want someone to bring the food to me. Then I want the dishes to be cleared away and cleaned by someone else.
I wonder if eating out more means more to woman who consistently cook and clean for their families (men too) than it means to those who don’t?

I don’t.
I hate the music and I hate the other patrons. I can make better food at a cheaper price without monophobia.

I like to eat but I don’t like to cook, basically.

Same reasons as you, plus what @filmfann said when it’s hot out.

My wife enjoys cooking, so when she’s doing it – great. I’m a decent cook, but I don’t enjoy cooking at all. So if there’s an opportunity to eat out, I will.

As much as I enjoy cooking, my skill level is not high enough to enjoy a lot of the foods I would get in a restaurant. Also, it’s not always practical to have the equipment or types of ingredients on hand, and some dishes are simply too labor intensive for my personality. When I cook at home, things need to be relatively simple and quick. For example, I love eating at Indian buffets, but I could never manage to make one, let alone 12 to 16 different dishes, and have it come out tasting authentic. There are certain restaurants that make dishes that I love, that I could never master at home.

I do it for all the reasons that you do. And I too am a generous tipper, if the service justifies it.
And you are correct. When I cook for friends, I am busy with the food, and I do not get to socialize as much.
The problem is, nobody in any restaurant on Earth can cook better than me, or my girlfriend for that matter. So I tend to cook for others more often than I go out.

@josie Do you do any Indian curry recipes?

The experience and the food – in no particular order. It’s nice to go to a lovely restaurant with friends or people I love and ‘break bread’ together. To share not just good food, but company and conversation in a nice setting. The ‘service’ part goes with the experience. For me the wait staff are important. We’re pretty friendly people so if the restaurant is not too busy we’ll always be friendly and talk to the wait staff. A friendly, knowledgeable waiter can really enhance an ‘eating out’ experience.

It’s nice to be part of the conversations without having to constantly get up to check on the food, and then constantly cleaning up afterward.

The ambiance, not having to cook myself, for a change, to experience cuisines that are new to me or whose cooking methods are more than I am easy with. Often they use ingredients with which I’m not familiar and if I tried to use them I’d have to buy a can or jar of some spices I might never use again. Recently we’ve had a couple Afghani restaurants open which fit my description perfectly: wonderful food; ingredients that are not familiar; interesting decor; and something I’m not likely to duplicate easily.
I also do not deep fat fry and there are places that have Japanese, Chinese, French, and other deep fried dishes that I love, but won’t cook myself.
I’m making myself hungry,

I only eat once or twice a week. I would hate to do it all the time. Mostly because the food is generally unhealthy and fattening.

@JLeslie: You only eat once or twice a week? You must be starving! ;-P
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My fiancé is a wonderful cook, and we buy as much as we can directly from the farmers, so our food is fresh and treated ethically. I am very spoiled and find that few meals out are better than the dishes he makes us at home and I enjoy the quiet. He takes really loves to cook, so we do entertain periodically.

He, however, enjoys the experience and presentation of eating out, and looks for inspiration. We are fortunate to live in a very multiple-cultural area of a coastal state, between two big universities and near a couple major cities, so virtually every type of cuisine is within an hour’s drive. When we go out, we hardly speak other than to discuss the meal. We live together and are introverts, so we don’t engage in unnecessary chatter. When we’re with others, we let them direct the conversation.

For a milestone birthday he had a couple months ago, I took him to one of the top-rated restaurants in New York and he just loved the meal and also the whole production of it – how it was presented and choreographed.

Eat out. Oops.

The wife and I just dropped our nine year old daughter off at Bible Camp. For the record I am an atheist and have never had the ‘discussion’ funny how it’s not about sex anymore with my little girl. She is going in to this like I did as a child, sans expectations.

Just what in the fuck does this have to do with full service restaurants? I’m getting to that.

On our way back the Missus and I stopped at Buffalo Wild Wings and had a waitress clean up after us as we 32ozed our way in to knowing that this was the best decision we had made in a while. My little Squirrel has a great head on her shoulders. She’s smart enough to either know what the score is or ask the right questions about it afterwards.

As long as some of you pagan fuckers ain’t trying to feed her to the lions right now, i’m cool.

@Blondesjon I totally agree on the ‘sans expectations’ and your daughter going to Bible Camp. I’m an atheist too but my children took religious education at school. They could have opted out but my feeling is they need to make their own decisions about their belief in God or otherwise. To do that, they need to have information. Not that we didn’t talk when they asked me questions.

To stay on topic – I have no idea what Buffalo Wild Wings are… I hope they were delicious for you and MrsBlondes.

Because I have a buy one get one free coupon. (in compete reference to this post I made)

When I go out with friends, it’s for the social aspect more than the food. I’m pretty flexible as far as letting them pick the location – almost anything goes (except a recent suggestion by a friend that the “girls” should eat at a casino – that’s pretty unappealing to me).

If I go out with my daughter, it’s more just because I want the variety on the menu, without having to shop for the food, cook it, clean up. It’s much easier to go to a diner or something simple and pay a bit more but be done with it.

Well, there is only one restaurant that Rick and I go to fairly regularly (about once every two months) and we always get the same thing…their shrimp fajitas. I don’t know what they put in them but OMG….they are soooooo good! I don’t think I could duplicate it at home, but even if I could I appreciate not having to clean the mess up.

These days I find myself eating at a restaurant, any type, just out of laziness. I don’t want to cook, I don’t want to clean, I am eating to live, not living to eat. I find myself eating at the same restaurants on the same days of the week because they have some kind of special that day. Jeez, I don’t even like the food. No, that is not true, I just don’t find enjoyment in it. The food is ok, just nothing special.

My ideal is to eat at restaurants when I know that their kitchen will make something as good or better than I could do myself. Or if it is very labor-intensive and I don’t want to take a whole day making dinner (for instance, tamales or vada sambar—both delicious recipes designed in traditional societies where the women had nothing better to do but cook all day). I was spoiled with excellent homemade food growing up, and am now a very good cook myself, so I have high standards. But then again, I am lucky enough to live in a college town with a vigorous local/organic food movement, so there are plenty of veg-friendly restaurants with impressive kitchens to choose from.

Sometimes I will end up joining a group of friends at a restaurant that I would not choose myself, as a social event. Many people I know do not cook at all and so they don’t really have any standards.

In either case, I am there for the food and socializing. The service aspect doesn’t really appeal to me. I really hate it when the waiter is smarmy and intrusive, trying to hustle a better tip.

@Dutchess_III: I bet they’re full of salt, and that’s what makes them taste good.

I very rarely find “enjoyment” in food either @rojo. I eat to live too. Eating is SUCH a hassle.
@jca Why would you say that? Are you saying that If I dumped a ton of salt on everything I ate it would all taste wonderful? Why can’t it just taste good on its own merits?

I make some awesome tasting dishes at home. So does my husband. We don’t pour a ton of salt into them, but they still taste wonderful.

I’m a good and particular cook, so when I cook at home for friends, I’m preoccupied with the food and service. I love meeting friends at restaurants so we can be equally disengaged from the work.

But the food is always better when I cook.