How Often Do you Dine Out?

For me it's a question of when's the last time I dined in. But all that time is restaurants isn't for the sake of "the dining experience" it's just the fastest way to get a meal with colleagues, family & friends, so it's mostly in family style restaurants & cafes. I do make it a point to eat in establishments with a better cuisine than a Dennys, however, and avoid fast food like a plague. With an marvelous sushi restaurant a block from my house, that's pretty easy to do.

 

Once a month (budgeted). Usually at Red Robbin, burger, fries and a malt. Yum.

 

About once every 6 weeks, generally something kid friendly. Although we do take out (Chinese, pizza) probably every other weekend. But starting next week, we'll be doing a whole lot of that - we're remodeling our kitchen.

 

I confess: I visit a fast-food franchise once a week. The reason I do this is I need to use my ATM card for purchases 10 times a month in order to get higher interest. So four times for fast food, four times for groceries, once a month for gas, and once a month for some random thing I'd be buying anyway.

As for real dining out, I go with my girlfriend a couple of times a week. Italian is big with us, as is Chinese and seafood.

 

my wife and i go out once or twice a month, usually when she doesn't feel like cooking. seafood mostly and we love italian, byt that's easier to make at home. and we each take our respective parents out to lunch once a week.

 

Far too often. I am spending 3 weeks out of 4 travelling and thus living out of hotels and eating in restaurants. Generally limit myself to a single dish (no starters and no dessert). Lately, due to being in India every second week, I have been eating lots of Indian, but elsewhere, I normally mix my dinners - Thai one night, steak one night, Chinese another, Italian occassionally (I like this a lot, but prefer my wife's cooking of Italian dishes).

Went out for lunch with the wife today - we went to a Lebanese restaurant that we both like.

Looking forward to going to Shanghai in a couple of weeks - there is a great Greek restaurant near my normal hotel, and the meals are very reasonably priced.

I try to avoid the fast food places.

 

Once a month, at most. We can't afford eating too often at the places we really like, and the places that we can afford we can't stand their food.

Besides, my wife loves to cook and is really good at it. She uses only organic and fresh ingredients whenever possible. Thus my tastebuds have been thoroughly spoiled.

 

I don't live with my parents so we go out to eat dinner once a week to keep in touch.

 

I eat in a restaurant maybe once or twice a month, so it's a rare treat. A form of 'away-from-home-dining' I use more often is to buy a meal's worth of fruits and vegetables, along with some sliced meat, at a grocery store. This works especially well for road trips when I don't always want a full meal, or to take the time for it. Browsing the aisles is faster, cheaper, and probably healthier for me and the environment, than most restaurant fare. Although, judging by people's reactions, it may be awhile before biting into a whole red bell pepper is socially acceptable.

 

Wife and I have a budget to go out to dinner once a week to keep our sanity. We both mostly work opposite of each other but there is one day when we are both off to take a break from it all. For food satisfaction we usually hit Cheesecake Factory, Elephant Bar, The Habit, Claim Jumper, Mimi's Cafe, we usually roll the dice or go on mood. Once in a while Five Guys or In and Out if we don't want to dine out. Damn, I'm hungry now! We do a movie night once a month for mental satisfaction, just saw Super 8 the other day and it was pretty good!

 

Usually once a week, we go to a local Thai restaurant for salad rolls and curry.

When we go shopping, we usually pick up a sandwich from the food co-op's fridge - today, it was Tempeh bacon, lettuce, tomato on whole grain (all Vegan). Yummy!

 

Putting on my snob toque:
Being a classically and formally trained chef I find it difficult to enjoy eating out at most places. I find it a waste of money and abuse of my palate to dine on what most Americans find acceptable.
I love to eat when the food is expected to be fresh and fabulous. When we dine out, it's usually fine Mediterranean, Foodie Fusion or Japanese fare.

 

When I lived in the Midwest, there was a dearth of local restaurants--just about everything were national chain franchises--and that get's boring in a hurry. In some areas, it was impossible even to find a local pizza joint.

Luckily, I now live in an area (Portland, ME) where local restaurants vastly outnumber the chains.

As far a frequency, my wife & I will go out at least once a week; however, my job takes me traveling and I'm at the mercy of wherever I'm staying, depending on how far the restaurants are from the hotel, so that usually means a chain restaurant.

 

You have some great restaurants there in Portland. I ate in a small pub downtown (I wish I could remember the name).

 

Sorry, my finger slipped and hit the send button. What I was trying to write was that I had an extremely memorable meal in a small pub in Portland.

 

Once per week we eat out at a restaurant, unless we go round to a pair of friends' house and eat there.

Take out night is Friday.

My wife also eats out with a friend once per week. That night I often grab some take-out and go round to a friend's house.

So, the answer is a lot and we spend too much on it because my wife has a much better palate than I have and loves food. I don't complain too much since she also loves to cook and we usually have at least one new dish each week.

Unlike Pilot we live further north, in central Maine. Not as many restaurants around as Portland (where we've enjoyed a couple), but we'll often drive down to Brunswick, have been to a good one in Bath a couple of times and have been trying some more restaurants further up the coast in Rockland, Camden and Bar Harbor (for the prices the restaurants should have some f**king air conditioning, just for the hot days). If we don't feel like driving for an hour or more there are some good local restaurants too.

Have Prius, have gourmand wife, will travel for food.

 

On the way to golf in the morning I'll grab a sandwich at McD's.
After men's league golf we have dinner at the course.
My wife and I mostly do take-out because it's half the price assuming we have a drink and we don't have to put up with consistently bad waitservice. We do this probably once every 2 weeks.
We use up gift certificates we get at Christmas..usually Outback or local pubs/restaurants.
We buy the occasional groupon to a Thai or Indian restaurant.
If we do go out, it's usually a local inexpensive Italian place.
We have get togethers with friends a couple times a year each at a place halfway between us. Both tend to be Italian dinners.
We have three local Ice Cream haunts, we hit them usually once a week.
BTW, what is it with Cheesecake Factory. I can never get in the place. Always a long wait, meaning we go somewhere else.