> and the British, as a rule, don't do to-go portions from a restaurant.
This isn't true at all.
This isn't true at all.
Then we suddenly see a foreigner do it and wonder what other options we've missed and start to wish life came with a manual.
My mind was blown and my life changed forever. Now I order french onion soup without the onions (high end steakhouses are happy to strain it), shrimp tempura rolls with no tails, whatever. I order my salmon nigiri with no skin. I’ll order sides of sauces from other menu items I didn’t get.
It’s rare they don’t accommodate me. (Before you ask, I always tip super well and don’t ever mind an upcharge for a special side sauce or whatever.)
Unless it's a place with a certain vision/theme/morals or artsy food, they just want to make you happy.
I used to drink a lot of pop/soda. When I initially cut back I stopped buying two liters for the house and only drank when eating out or the like. It always shocked my table mates to see me asking for a to-go cup for my drink.
But now I see those same people getting their drinks to go too, especially after the lockdowns and everywhere was offering curbside drinks.
While most would agree that fresh food tastes better (unless it's pizza, that jury is out on that one), that doesn't mean we're too posh for the looks of leftovers. A good portion of our food is also quite boring, and the most common takeaway comes pretty crudely presented and packaged. If we only ate food in fancy presentation, we'd all have starved to death by now.
The reason I don't eat half-eaten meals is because I never half-eat meals in the first place. I order the amount of food I want to/can eat, and should that plan fail, I share with my tablemate(s) - although I tend to be the recipient on that one. We don't do it because we fear taking a crime-scene with us home in the form of a haphazardly filled styrofoam box like poor people, but just because it seems polite and proper to both size your mail right and try finish it. That, and that we didn't know that taking it with us home was even an option in the first place.
Maybe this is creeping in due to seeing Americans doing this in movies. You start to realise how people cope with those huge portions sizes in the US. Many people don't eat everything in one sitting.
It's hard to explain why we don't do it in the UK. We generally assume that packaging is not free so therefore wouldn't expect someone to give free takeaway boxes. Also, like almost everything cultural in the UK, I expect it is rooted in class snobbery. If you need to take away, maybe this indicates that you're poor and need to make a meal last. These aren't conscious prejudices, they're relics of the past and subconscious.
It is definitely rare, but not completely unheard of; more common if you're in a sitdown place that also does takeaway/delivery. I've done it a few times. One memorable incident was in Bradford where we arrived late at a curry house after interminable faffing around, were all extremely hungry, ordered more than we usually would, and halfway through the starters and giant naan realized that we'd overdone it. Think we got more than one meal out of the leftovers.
Portion sizes vary by restaurant, and also you’re not always the same level of hungry.
Just yesterday i tried a new restaurant, the meal was delicious and the portions were unexpectedly large (and i had a single dish, a single course).
I happily took the leftovers away.
No system is perfect and a culture of taking home leftovers does not necessarily reduce waste overall.
How do you adapt and order less than 1 thing?
Well not being able to take home leftovers does increase waste, because as others have pointed out there will always be cases where you will have leftovers, no matter how careful you are.
So the question as to which system results in less waste boils down to a question that must be answered experimentally.
Reducing waste on a societal level is complex. Cultural practices of restaurants boxing food to take away may result in less waste but it may also result in more waste.
I feel that having leftovers is never desiderable, with or without the ability to take them home. In France the restaurants are obligated to allow you to take leftovers home, and in my experience this has not changed anything on the behavior of people eating in restaurants. The only thing that changes is that in the rare case in which you have leftovers, you can take them home.
If they don't do half-plate and the plates are large I might ask around the table if someone wants to split or take a portion of mine.
> no-one who cares about food ever does
That's a bit universal for what's simply your opinion.
> That's a bit universal for what's simply your opinion.
Yes, and that's a feature, not a bug, we're here to share our opinions, this is not a peer-reviewed forum.
With all that said, I still cannot understand how come a person who says he/she cares about food could eat re-heated takeaway stuff (supposedly at the microwave, which makes it double yuck-y).
If it’s your opinion, you may want to introduce it with "Personally, I would never …" instead of writing "no-one who cares about food ever does", which is obviously false.
> With all that said, I still cannot understand how come a person who says he/she cares about food could eat re-heated takeaway stuff (supposedly at the microwave, which makes it double yuck-y).
There are other ways to re-heat food, you can mix with other things, you can also eat it cold if that’s your thing. It’s also not just about caring about food, it’s also caring about money: when you eat your leftovers, you don’t have to pay for new food.
Maybe it's a regional thing?
Seemed to be fairly common in London when I lived there for a few years.
It is an exception compared to the rest of the UK.
I only see it happen if someone falls ill, is called away or there was an error in the order e.g. you manage to order four entire chickens instead of four portions.
Is it because a small paper box is involved? Would you find it less obscene if everyone carried a reusable food container with them to a restaurant to mitigate the risk of offensive boxed leftovers?
Many people eat more than they need to at any given time, that is arguably greedy and argubably wasteful in a different way.
Portion sizes are static, appetites vary, letting people manage for themselves is perfectly fine.
We don’t do it often only because we don’t over-order as a general rule (c.f. my wife’s Chinese family in Canada who over-order every time we go out and take whatever is left home).
I'd say it's the other way around: The British norm of eating everything on your plate was traditionally to avoid food waste.
And even though supermarket food is incredibly cheap these days, the norm is maintained by parents who want their children to eat their vegetables.
So Brits rarely see one another asking for to-go boxes even though many restaurants will offer them for free.
I've had upmarket steakhouses offer to box up my remaining food despite them not offering delivery.
It happens, I've done it. Certainly at pizza restaurants and such where we've over-ordered. It's easy to chuck half a pizza or whatever in a takeaway box, and they're always happy to do so.
It's just less common in the UK because meals generally aren't so oversized like they can be in the US. In the UK we usually order what we can eat. If there's food left on my plate, it's because it didn't taste good and I don't want it.
Yep. It conflicts with the "clean your plate!" mentality many kids were brought up with, but realizing that a meal you buy is often really enough for two meals and that it's OK to take some back with you can help both your weight and your wallet.
Due to various factors, we can't afford to make more food for that price. So we charge the same (or more) for less food on the plate compared to other countries.
> Also, like almost everything cultural in the UK, I expect it is rooted in class snobbery. If you need to take away, maybe this indicates that you're poor and need to make a meal last. These aren't conscious prejudices, they're relics of the past and subconscious.
This is just you having a hammer and everything looking like a nail. If you're shamefully poor, you're not eating out at all. Cheap takeaway food like fish and chips is definitely not shameful, and people of all socioeconomic classes eat it.
I wonder if you're assuming I'm not from the UK, I am. I've seen it regularly, across strata. You are not speaking for the entire nation.
Clearly (judging by the mixed comments where some say it's not common, and some say it is) this is a regional thing, but the assumption being made in that thread, and your comment, is untrue.
So my elderly German in-laws would be horrified with how casually my Texan ones will buy and grill large, expensive slabs of beef, and end up throwing out a good deal of it because it was way more than the bunch could eat. I am, anyway, but have learned to bite my tongue.
So, it was sufficiently unusual that I had to be creative to make it happen.
It is. Go somewhere like South Africa where you expect with most meals to have a takeaway box, as there's so much food. We might do it, especially if we have kids with us, but it's not something after basically every meal.
Otherwise I think the rare occasion where someone requests it is when a younger child has hardly touched their meal.
Most, if not all, restaurants have something they can drop leftovers into if you ask for it.
As someone who lives in Spain but is Swedish, I've never had any restaurant tell me "we don't have takeaway boxes" or "no, we won't do that" when asking to take my leftovers with me, neither in Spain or Sweden or any other country I've visited.
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