Looking back, I used to go out primarily for entertainment value. I enjoyed being in a fancy space, developing a rapport with the wait staff, people watching, and dressing up for the occasion.
Me?
I hate that. It has a very low entertainment/annoyance ratio to me (I hate getting dressed up, for one thing).
I don’t go out to eat, generally, unless there is some compelling reason, because I don’t intrinsically enjoy it. I think that restaurants are intrinsically overpriced (not relative to their costs of doing business, but relative to their value to me compared to cooking at home), I don’t know for sure what’s in the food, and can’t get it exactly the way I like it, the portions are too large, particularly on the carbs (again, for economic reasons), and I really don’t enjoy other people serving or waiting on me, particularly when a tip is expected. I really prefer to do it myself (I have the same annoyance with luggage in hotels).
To me the only reasons to go out to eat are a) to eat something that I couldn’t make myself due to lack of time or ingredients (which is why I almost never go to a steak house), b) as a social occasion with others or c) I’m travelling away from home and have no other choice. But it’s not something about which I ever think, “Boy, I’d sure like to go out to eat in some fancy restaurant.”
[Update a few minutes later]
The very first commenter over at Al Dente has another big reason I don’t like going out:
Too many restaurant owners think that noise = fun, and they actively try to keep the noise level over 90 db. I hate big chain restaurants with concrete walls and floors that have conversations bouncing and echoing off them until they turn into a cacophonous din. I have gotten up with my wife and left restaurants before ordering because the noise was too oppressive. And just for the record, some music enhances the meal (Frank & Dino at an Italian place, etc.), and some music ruins it (I don’t want to have to shout to my dining companions to be heard over the latest blaring hip hop hit). The nadir had to be when I took my wife to a little bar/restaurant in Dallas for an after theater drink, and we were seated beneath a speaker that was blaring some rap song that sounded like a Tourette’s patient giving X-rated how-to instructions to an apprentice rapist.
Particularly when I’m out with friends, trying to have a conversation, I like to be able to hear them and talk to them without shouting. Planet Hollywood? Please. There is absolutely nothing about a place like that to appeal to me, and if I’m with other people who want to go, I do my best to dissuade.
I guess this gets into a broader issue. I am not a “party” person. Which is not to say that I’m not social, or that I don’t enjoy the company of others. I enjoy nothing better than getting together with a bunch of interesting people, but the point of getting together is to discuss interesting things, not to be pummelled with mindless noise shoulder-to-shoulder with a throng. This was true for me even in college. I’ve always hated that. But I have enough problems with going out to eat without having to be assaulted with noise. I don’t understand the attitude that “more volume” equals “more fun.” But apparently for many people, it is, or the places wouldn’t inflict on them what is to me a punishment.
I guess I just *am* a party animal. I seek out pubs with crowds and loud music. I also eat at a local noodle bar almost every day when I am home in Belfast… partly because the walk out and back gives me about a mile of exercise under my boots and I find that does me a lot of good. But I have always found I do some of my best work in a coffee shop or small restaurant. Even in the seventies, I wrote most of my RT OS assembly code while sitting in a small restaurant in Squirrel Hill where the girls knew me as “large coffee”. They remember regulars by their typical orders 🙂 That is part of the craic as well… places I go tend to be regular spots where I get to know the staff. Hell, I hired two women students from the aforementioned burger place and turned them into systems programmers.
Too many restaurant owners think that noise = fun, and they actively try to keep the noise level over 90 db. I hate big chain restaurants with concrete walls and floors that have conversations bouncing and echoing off them until they turn into a cacophonous din.
I’ve actually seen restaurants where the walls appear to be covered with stainless steel. Sure, it’s easy to clean but the noise levels are uncomfortable, to say the least. Other restaurants think “dark=fancy.” Sorry, if it’s so dark that I can’t read the menu, I’m not coming back. One aspect of getting older is that it’s harder to read small print, especially if the lighting is poor. It’s also that it’s hard to hear others when the background noise level is high.
My wife and I eat out a couple times a month. We very seldom go to fancy places, we just want to go eat something we don’t know how to cook at home (Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, etc.). Why pay for something you can cook just as well or better at home?
Rand, this might be a good time for some of that biting commentary. Over on NSF people seem to be concluding Constellation and SDLV are as dead as a doornail. I’ll believe it when the budget has Obama’s signature on it.
My folks owned Italian restaurants when I was a kid. I love listening to Dino. I thought all kids had waitresses serving them (being the son of the owner made them all the friendlier.)
But keep the sound level down. The best places have sound baffles (walls and drapes) between group areas.
I agree, Rand. Our local restaurants are all installing TVs in the dining rooms, with the volume turned up. If I wanted to watch TV while eating, I’d stay home. Even the malls have increased the volume of their “background” music to the point that it can be unpleasant to stay there for long.
Apparently, the managements of these places think that most customers don’t want to be without the media “stimulation” for even a couple of hours. Maybe its true. It has the opposite effect for me and my husband. We leave as soon as possible.
Maybe its an age factor. We didn’t grow up with the constant blare everywhere we went, so we can appreciate silence, or nature’s music. I don’t think some of the kids have ever listened to bird song, or wind in the trees, or water over a stream bed. They have no idea what they’re missing.
Dale, remember that rave at the SpaceShipOne flight? Worst thing about it.
I don’t think some of the kids have ever listened to bird song, or wind in the trees, or water over a stream bed. They have no idea what they’re missing.
That really resonates considering that I was up in Big Sur yesterday, with huge roaring streams and falls from the recent rains.
It’s time to start going to some other restaurants. Chain restaurants are the worst perpetrators of noisy environments, and a lot of what they serve for food are pre-cooked frozen entrees prepared in factories. When my wife and I go out for dinner (on those occasions when we don’t have a 2-year old in tow), we go to local independent restaurants and enjoy something we’d never cook at home.
I suspect restaurants these days are upping the ambient noise to make the screaming kids at the next table less annoying; their shrieks really do seem less offensive when you already can’t hear yourself think.
Agree completely. But, maybe I’m just getting old. The young thrive on constant stimulation, particularly the youth of today. And, their hearing isn’t yet shot… from hanging out in too many ear-splitting venues when they were young.
Yeah, totally.
I tried the local “Joe’s Crab Shack”, and while the food wasn’t bad, it was far too loud – especially given that, at the time I went there, almost all the customers were older.
And the waitstaff were (presumably under duress) doing some horrible “performance” involving singing.
That isn’t fun. That isn’t good dining. It’s annoying as hell. (And the singing schtick wastes staff time – even assuming they enjoy it, rather than consider it an ordeal.)
It’s kind of strange, but the noise levels in most fast food restaurants is a lot lower than in the “fun” places like Planet Hollywood, TGIF or the Hard Rock Cafe. While a typical In N Out Burger or McDonald’s does not have much ambience, you don’t have to shout to hold a conversation in one of their seating areas.
can’t get it exactly the way I like it
One of the more interesting restaurant concepts is The Butcher Shop, where you can grill your own meat.
There are a few other places like that, but it hasn’t caught on widely. A couple of times I’ve mentioned it to people, and the reaction has been, “If I’m going to pay to eat in a restaurant, why would I want to do the work?”
And the singing schtick wastes staff time – even assuming they enjoy it, rather than consider it an ordeal.
I ate at Joe’s Crab Shack once but don’t recall anyone singing.
Perhaps it was unique to that location.
There used to be an Italian restaurant in Dallas, I can’t recall the name (Figaro’s, maybe?) that had waiters and waitresses from the Dallas Opera, who would sing the menu.
I’m not very good at the “zero in on one conversation, and screen out the rest” thing. So at a restaraunt or party like that, I’m as isolated as if I were wearing ear plugs.