What to Eat When… — 60 Guides to Deciding

What to eat when…

Choosing a restaurant is rarely a question about food. It is a question about what kind of evening it is, who is at the table, and how much attention you have left. These are written for the situation rather than the cuisine.

When you can't decide

What to do when you can't decide where to eat — Nobody is short of restaurants.
What to eat when nothing sounds good — This is a different problem from not being hungry.
What to eat when you're too tired to cook — When you're too tired to cook, you're usually too tired to decide as well.
How to try a new cuisine — The best way to try a new cuisine is at a small, busy restaurant run by people from that culture, ordering the dish the kitchen is proudest of — and asking for help, which almost every restaurant is happy to give..
What to eat when you're stressed — Stress does something specific to eating out: it removes your tolerance for friction.
What to eat when you've had a bad day — There is a version of this where you order something enormous, eat a third of it, and feel worse.

How you're feeling

What to eat when you're hungover — A hangover does not make you hungry so much as it makes you suggestible.
What to eat when you have a cold — The specific problem with eating while congested is that most of what you call taste is smell, and yours has gone.
What to eat after a workout — The post-gym window gets talked about as a supplement problem.
Where to eat when you're trying to eat healthy — Eating healthily at restaurants is easier than people expect, as long as you choose the right kind of restaurant.
What to eat on a cheat day — If you're eating carefully most of the time, a cheat meal should be something you've been looking forward to — the best version of something you genuinely love, not whatever's nearest..
Eating out while pregnant — Eating out while pregnant is mostly about a short list of things to ask about — undercooked meat and eggs, raw fish, unpasteurised cheese and deli meats — and restaurants are generally very willing to help..
What to eat when it's too hot to eat — Appetite drops in heat, and the default response is a salad, which is why so many hot-weather meals are unsatisfying.
What to eat on a cold rainy night — On a bad-weather night the restaurant calculation changes shape.

Who you're with

Where to eat on a first date — A first date restaurant has one job that has almost nothing to do with the food: it has to make a conversation between two strangers easier than it would otherwise be.
Where to go on a second date — A second date is a chance to show a little more of who you are.
Where to go for date night — Date night for an established couple is about stepping out of routine.
Where to eat when you're meeting the parents — You are not picking a restaurant you would enjoy.
Where to eat with picky eaters — The usual solution is to give up and go somewhere with a menu so broad it is good at nothing.
Where to eat with a toddler — A restaurant that works with a toddler is not one that tolerates children.
Where to eat with teenagers — Teenagers are hungry, have strong opinions and are easily embarrassed.
Where to eat with grandparents — Eating out with grandparents is mostly about comfort: a room quiet enough to hear in, chairs that are easy to get in and out of, an entrance without stairs, and food that is familiar without being dull..
Where to eat with your dog — Dog-friendly restaurants almost always means dog-friendly patios — health codes in most places keep dogs out of indoor dining.
Where to eat with a wheelchair or mobility needs — 'Wheelchair accessible' on a listing often means the front door is step-free and nothing else.
Where to eat when half the group is vegetarian — The usual compromise is a restaurant that is good for the meat eaters and survivable for everyone else, with one vegetarian main that has been on the menu unchanged for six years.
Where to eat with a big group — Above about six people, choosing a restaurant stops being a question of taste and becomes a logistics problem.
Where to take friends visiting from out of town — There is a trap here, and almost everyone falls into it: you take visitors to the famous place, which you do not actually like, because it is what the city is known for.
Where to eat when catching up with a friend — Catching up with a friend you haven't seen in a while is about the conversation.
Where to eat when you're eating alone — Eating alone in public carries a stigma that almost nobody actually feels once they are doing it.

Work

Where to take the team for lunch — A team lunch has a hard constraint most social meals do not: it has to end.
Where to get a quick lunch — A quick lunch has to be fast, filling and good enough that you don't regret it at 3pm.
Where to have a breakfast meeting — A breakfast meeting needs three things from a restaurant: it opens early, it's quiet enough to talk, and the food is easy to eat while you're focused on the conversation..
Where to take a client to dinner — The restaurant is a tool here.
What to eat at an interview lunch — You are being assessed for the entire meal, including the parts that feel like a break from being assessed.
Where to eat when you're traveling for work — Business travel leaves you tired, short of time and in a place you don't know.

Occasions

Where to go for a birthday dinner — A birthday dinner has to feel different from a normal dinner, which is a requirement about atmosphere rather than about food.
Where to eat for an anniversary — An anniversary dinner is not really about the food.
Where to propose at a restaurant — A restaurant proposal works best when it feels private, even in a public room.
Where to eat for a graduation dinner — Graduation dinner combines the two hardest restaurant problems at once: a large, mixed group of people with different tastes and ages, on the single busiest weekend of the year in a college town..
Where to eat when you're celebrating something — The mistake is assuming that celebrating means spending more.
Where to eat after a funeral — The meal after a funeral — a repast, a wake, a reception — is about giving people a place to sit together and talk.

Holidays

Where to eat on Valentine's Day — Valentine's Day is the night restaurants are most crowded, most expensive and most likely to serve a rushed fixed menu.
Where to eat on Mother's Day — Mother's Day is consistently one of the busiest restaurant days in America, and most of that is brunch.
Where to eat on Father's Day — Father's Day is busy but less overwhelmed than Mother's Day, and the plan that works best is the one built around the specific thing he enjoys — which is often less formal than people assume..
Where to eat on Thanksgiving — Eating out on Thanksgiving is more common than people think — for small households, people working, people travelling and anyone who would rather not spend two days cooking.
Where to eat on Christmas Day — Christmas Day is the day the most restaurants close, which makes finding a good open one the whole problem.
Where to eat on New Year's Eve — New Year's Eve dinner has a timing problem: most people want to eat, then be somewhere at midnight.
Where to eat while watching the game — The perfect place to watch a game has good sightlines, the sound on, food that's better than it needs to be, and a crowd cheering for the same team.

Time, place and money

Where to eat early in the morning — Before 7am, most restaurants are closed.
Where to eat late at night — After about eleven the question stops being what you want and becomes what exists.
Where to eat after a late shift — If you finish at eleven or later, you are eating in a city that has mostly stopped serving, and the standard advice about restaurants is written for people whose evening starts when yours ends..
Where to eat when you're broke — Cheap food and bad food overlap much less than the price filters suggest.
What to eat during finals week — Finals week eating fails in a predictable way.
Where to eat on a Sunday night — Sunday evening has a specific and under-discussed problem: it is the night restaurants close.
Where to find a quiet restaurant — Restaurants have got louder: hard surfaces, open kitchens, loud music.
Where to eat outside — A good patio can make an average meal memorable — but plenty of outdoor seating is a few tables on a noisy pavement.

On the move

Where to eat on a road trip — Every interstate exit has the same six buildings.
Where to eat before a flight — Airport food is expensive and mediocre for structural reasons that have nothing to do with the operators — a captive audience, brutal rents, and a kitchen built around holding food rather than cooking it.
What to eat on moving day — Moving day food has a set of constraints no other meal has: no kitchen, no table, possibly no plates, several people who have been doing manual work for six hours, and a strict requirement that nobody needs a nap afterwards..
Where to eat when you're new in town — When you've just moved somewhere, every meal is a guess.