It's nice to have a restaurant where you can expect a reliably good experience. |
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The occasions when I don't want to try a new restaurant |
The most irritating thing about being a Leo, especially an August Leo, is my complete inability — visceral and beyond my control, I swear — to not constantly remind everyone that My Birthday Is Coming Up. That’s to say, bear with me with this birthday anecdote, because I promise it’s going somewhere restaurant-related.
A birthday is an excuse to have a birthday dinner, but the thing about figuring out where I want to go for my birthday this year is that I am simply overwhelmed by the plethora of choices, especially when a few of my more high-end, special-occasion picks have underwhelmed on recent visits. I am, obviously, an adult who knows how to cope with disappointment, but the idea of being disappointed by a less-than-awesome yet still expensive meal, on my birthday of all days — when someone else is paying — stings a little harder than being let down on a random Thursday.
I think my husband has the right idea here, because for his birthday, we typically choose from just one of two places, despite me offering to take him anywhere in this beautiful city. Both are restaurants we know we love and where we now have an established history of having had a good time. Therefore, we can muse, Remember last year, when we finally left enough room to actually order the brownie sundae? Or: Yes, that beer slushie WAS so good. We know what to order, we know generally what it will cost and that said cost will be commensurate with the experience we expect, and we don’t really have to worry about whether we can get a reservation or not as both restaurants are “middle-aged” and pretty walk-in friendly. That we do not go to either of these restaurants very often is key, too, as it allows them to retain a special and celebratory mystique.
This is my argument: A birthday is not the ideal time to try a new restaurant. As such, for my birthday dinner, I will be choosing, well, the very same restaurant we just went to for my husband’s birthday. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, as they say. This got me thinking about other instances when it’s best not to choose somewhere new, as well as when I do think it’s valuable to push yourself out of your comfort zone.
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Photo credit: Saint Florian |
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First dates: Grain of salt here, as I haven’t been on a first date in over a decade, but a first date is not an instance in which I’d ever want to relinquish the reassurance and built-in confidence of being on — what’s at least to some extent — my home turf. (In addition to being a Leo, I am anxious.) I say “to some extent” because I also wouldn’t want to run the risk of burning an actual favorite spot on a bad date, or, worse yet, introducing someone I might not vibe with to my go-to, lest they like it too much that they then make it theirs.
Taking your parents out to dinner: Look, on all sides of my family are parents and older family members who are very open-minded eaters, and still, there is such a thing as a “parent-friendly” restaurant and a “non-parent-friendly” one, and if you’ve never been, it’s not always easy to discern which category a place falls into. This has much to do with how crowded a place is, how dark it is, how tight it is, and how loud it is, and none of those qualities can accurately be conveyed by reading reviews or watching videos. Thus, the ideal restaurant is one you’ve been to before and vetted, because only you truly know the level of background noise that’ll render your dad impossible to hear or the precise point of dimness at which your mom will want to get the phone flashlight out. A “non-parent-friendly” restaurant is, to me, also any place that could be considered too expensive — you don’t need your parents really thinking that hard about where your money’s going if not a house.
Job interviews: Many IRL job interviews now take place in cafes, and again, as with dates, you don’t want to be out of your depth; it behooves you to have the upper hand to the extent that you can have it, knowing when a spot will be chill and which seats are secluded enough to ease the nerves of making a pitch for yourself. Imagine choosing a new-to-you coffee shop, only to realize the seating is all communal and now, in addition to stammering through your problem-solving skills, it’s like you’re also auditioning for the guy next to you who’s trying to code and the woman “writing” who’s really probably pointing out the cringest bits of your spiel in her group chat.
When I really do think you should try a new restaurant, however, is when you’d like to enrich your relationship with someone, be it a paramour, a long-time partner, or a promising new friend. Trying new experiences with another person is important for bonding, and seeing how someone else approaches a new restaurant also tells you a lot about them while also letting them into your inner world: your preferences, your peculiarities, your trove of midnight-rabbit-hole-researched knowledge about the spice trade or whatever. Do they roll with the punches? Can they handle bad service or a room that’s too loud and be nonplussed? Do they want to eat all the same dishes that you want to try? You’ve got a winner. Or does it turn out they treat servers badly and you’ve never noticed because you’ve only ever gotten takeout together, or that your preferences are completely misaligned, making future family-style dining a nightmare? Yikes, but also enlightening!
Like I said, I’ve been with my husband forever. Because of that, we love the thought exercise that new restaurants provide, debriefing about them after as my college roommates and I once did after parties — just, from now on, maybe not on birthdays. For that, we’ll pay another visit to the Birthday Spot. |
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