What do I dislike about eating out?
- Too loud!!!!!! So many places these days have no soft furnishings to absorb sound so voices, chairs, dishes, cutlery all create a horrible din.
- Too bright! Most places are too bright... With the noise and the light I want to scream.
- People looking at me... Or at least me thinking they are.
- Too expensive!!!! Here in Australia a simple pub meal is now ridiculously expensive. For crappy trans fat cooked chips that were heated from frozen and a limp, crushed salad from a bag of mixed leaves and pesticides...
- Too much food and no option for a smaller serve unless I try ordering a kids' meal, which I can't really get away with, and I don't want to eat anyway.
- Unhealthy kids' meals!!!!!!!!!!!!! Grrrr!!!!! How can I get my kids to eat veg when eateries serve fish and chips only, with no salad. Grrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!! They don't even offer vegetable sticks or anything, which my kids would happily eat.
- Being asked if everything is ok. Better to ask how everything is. Slightly different nuance, without the expectation that all is good. Many times I've said yes to the first question, even when it's not ok, just to get them to go away. I'm too scared of drawing attention to myself to complain.
- Crappy music. Why have music in a place full of people talking???? It's illogical! It just means we all have to talk more loudly...
- TV!!!!! If I want to watch TV I'll stay home, thanks. I don't want my kids watching TV during a meal out, either.
- Vermin. I've seen cockroaches in kitchens in Japan. Yuck. To be fair, the little chabane ("brown wings") are everywhere... But also birds. I'm a birder but I don't want birds eating scraps off my lunch table.
- The assumption that alcohol must go with every meal, and thus a disappointingly thin selection of non alcoholic beverages.
- Dirty decor that hasn't been dusted in years. Light fittings, curtain tops or windows, picture frames, even walls. Also in many of the okonomiyaki-ya (okonomiyaki joints) in Japan,
everything is covered in a layer of dusty grease from the many table top hot plates frying up food on a daily basis.
- Smoking. Illegal in Australia, thankfully, but was a problem when I visited other countries. Yuck. Who wants cancer with their dinner?
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Walsie, I don't much like eating out in my home country... When I lived in Japan, I loved eating out in most places (even if I did see cockroaches in a few places), not least because I LOVE the food. The music, if any, is always appropriate to the venue and quiet. It's often dark, and tables are often intimate. The service is absolutely impeccable. The waiters/waitresses often crouch down next to the table to take orders, which sounds weird but isn't...they are listening carefully and putting the customer in a position of importance. The food was generally cheaper and in lots of places you can see the kitchen. I love sitting there watching the food being cooked, or cooking it myself.