Dealing with eating out.
We were on one of our regular burger date nights, ordering the usual down at the local Grill’d, burger and cider each, with a regular fries to share. Everything was going well, both enjoying our burgers, cider taking the edge off a tough day at work. Then it happened, a bit over half way through the fries and I called it; “I can’t eat any more.” E was obviously full as well. I looked at her and said “well I guess that’s $5 for the jar”.
That was the response from E. She really didn’t want to pay for the left over chips, which opened the discussion on how to handle eating out. Sure, it’s not our fault that a chef served too many chips with the parma, or that they were generous and served a whole avocado with breakfast. But if one of the motivations to stop food wastage was because there are people that don’t have enough, then it’s not their fault the chef put too much on my plate either.
So how to handle eating out. Firstly consider how big the serve is going to be. You can always order more of something later. Sometimes though, you just get unlucky, as E did a few weeks after our chip night. For lunch at work one day she bought herself a salad and while ok in taste, was served with far too many red onions in the mix. No matter how hungry you are, there is a limit to how many red onion slices you eat in one sitting. Especially during the work day!
Most people would think that paying $5 for leaving those red onions is too harsh, that they draw the line at salad filler. For me it depends on how you are looking at it. Overtime we will hopefully be able to build a list of places that serve good quality, reasonable size dishes. And in the meantime, I’m happy to pay the price to cross those other establishments off my list.