What are the etiquette rules about going out to dinner with another person? Who picks the restaurant? Who gets to veto the choice, and who has to suck it up and deal with it?
Growing up, we never really went out to dinner unless it was someone’s birthday or we had something really special to celebrate, like me getting good grades on my report card.
We never went out because of good grades on my report card.
The best my family hoped for was, "Well, at least he’s not repeating a grade."
My wife’s family, on the other hand, loved going out to eat and did so frequently. So they understood the rules of restaurant etiquette.
Not the normal rules, like no elbows on the table or saying "please" and "thank you." Most people understand those, and the ones who don’t end up on Reddit.
Etiquette rules, like everyone had to agree on where they went, which meant anyone could veto a choice. It didn’t matter if everyone wanted pizza; if one person didn’t want it, then you weren’t getting pizza that night.
My father-in-law loved going out to dinner, but there were certain places he didn’t like going, like Chinese and Mexican. And when you live in small-town Indiana, that’s as international as it gets. No Ethiopian, no Cuban, no Thai, no French, just Chinese and Mexican.
It’s not that he didn’t like it. It’s that he traveled all over the world, especially China and Mexico, for several days or even weeks at a time. Where he would eat Chinese and Mexican food.
Except in those places, they just call it "food."
"Where do you want to eat tonight?" my wife and I would ask.
"I don’t care," he’d say.
"Oh, sure you do," I’d say. "You just have to pick a place."
"No, I really don’t care at all."
"Fine, let’s go for Mexican."
"No, not Mexican."
"How about Chinese then?" I was winding him up on purpose.
"No, not Chinese either."
"So pick a place," I’d say
"I really don’t care," he’d say.
"Clearly, you do!"
Since it was small-town Indiana, our options were pretty much limited to Applebee’s. There was the Applebee’s in Warsaw and the Applebee’s in Goshen. There was no difference between them; it was a question of whether we wanted to bump into people we knew or not.
The question of who pays is another issue. In general, if someone invites you to dinner, that means they're going to pay. There won’t be any argument; if you’re invited, you’re the guest.
You wouldn’t pay your host for dinner at their house, would you? Of course not. So if you get invited to a restaurant, the inviter is the host. And instead of having dinner at their house, they’re paying someone to fix dinner for them, almost like a caterer.
Nowadays, we’re more informal than that. Now we split the meals, especially at lunchtime. It’s sort of understood that lunchtime is an everyone-for-themselves venture.
But the rule still seems to hold for dinner. When my wife and I are invited out to dinner, we’re not expected, or even allowed, to pay.
Of course, we protest the appropriate amount: "Oh, no. We can’t let you do that, that’s too expensive," and do the same song and dance that people have been doing for centuries.
But in the end, we "reluctantly" give up and let the other couple "win."
A nice compromise is that we cover the tip (and tip well, because it’s cheaper than our half of the meal), or we’ll have dessert somewhere else and pay for that.
The big issue is, who gets the leftovers? I don’t mean the half a hamburger you weren’t able to eat, or the last three chicken wings you shared.
Let’s say you’re invited out to dinner with a friend (which means they’re buying). Your eyes are bigger than your stomach, and you order an entrée and a side dish — steak plus a side of tater tots. The steak comes with mashed potatoes, but you’re hankering for tots, and it’s only a few bucks. So with your friend’s blessing, you order the tots.
After you eat the steak and mashed potatoes, you realize you’re full, and you don’t even touch your tots. So who gets to take them home in a doggy bag?
On the one hand, they’re yours. You ordered them, and you were going to eat them, but it seems kind of rude to just claim them.
On the other hand, your friend is paying for dinner, and the tots are unclaimed property. You never touched them, so it’s not too gross for your friend to take them home.
So, who gets them, you or the friend?
One could argue that you should never have run up the bill to begin with, but that’s not what this question is about. There’s no third option, there’s no sermonizing about what should have happened or should not have happened. Don’t come at me on social media and say I’m a terrible friend because I over-ordered.
Just settle the argument, pick one of the two options, and answer the question.
It would be rude to do otherwise.
Photo credit: Spencer195 (Wikimedia Commons, GNU Free Documentation License 1.2)
My new humor novel, Mackinac Island Nation, is finished and available from 4 Horsemen Publications. You can get the ebook and print versions here.