I'm an EU citizen and always saw going to a restaurant as a social event, somewhere to gather with friends, family, etc to have a good time. I never went to a restaurant to eat. Eating something delicious was just a bonus.

>I wonder if there are also cultural/regulatory differences here.

It has more to do with cost of rental and salary difference, comparing to median Income and spending. And it is a world wide thing.

Eating out seems less popular in the the US right now. Everything is more expensive and there's the 18-25% tip that gets applied.

Going out to even a basic lunch with my wife is close to 50 usually for the meal.

Takeout I can tip the delivery person a little less. And keep left overs a little easier. Take out is only for being lazy, I'd still just cook and meet or beat in quality any restaurant except ones that mignt win an award or you can't do at home.

Pre COVID, takeout meant not tipping at all. We should probably shift back towards that world.

Post Covid, takeout also means no tipping. Just because someone programs a prompt doesn’t mean it needs to be answered in the affirmative.

I should have been clearer, meant delivery, only tip the driver, but its not 20%

most restaurants are absolutely terrible value for money.

Depends on what you value. If all you value are calories, then sure, there are much cheaper ways of getting the calories you need. But if you value time, or novelty, or the dining experience, or conversation with a neighbor or even just the bartender then there are plenty of places that cater to your values.

I can justify spending $25 to $50 a week eating at restaurants with friends. But eating fast food every single day is just pissing money away.

Sure, but money isn’t everything, and not everybody weighs their values the same way as you. Maybe they can justify it. Dishwashers are convenient, but you have to admit that paying someone else to put your dishes into the dishwasher is even more convenient.

The whole restaurant experience forced me to get more into cooking for myself because the value is just not there.

Low and behold it is actually fun to cook. It is actually more fun to be able to make a new dish yourself than to try a new restaurant. It is amusing how everything DIY is cool in hacker culture besides cooking. For no reason besides custom, people pretend they just don't have time to cook or that learning to cook isn't worth it. It is an obviously thoughtless idea.

Having less time to doom scroll your phone is a feature and not a bug.

I discovered air fryers + cheap Costco chicken is a great combination! Chicken tenderloins are $3.30 a pound and take very little time to cook and are delicious, low calorie, and high in protein.

Especially if you're anything above a 7/10 home cook

It's funny that they say productivity is up when all of my local restaurants seem to be slower than ever ... but I digress.

> Especially if you're anything above a 7/10 home cook

I'd move your assessment down to a 5/10 home cook.

Most restaurants are using ingredients of sufficiently low quality that it is now pathetically easy to beat them on that axis. Using even slightly better ingredients than average puts you ahead of 90% of restaurants, nowadays--even for something as stupidly easy as a salad.

I'm super lazy, but local restaurants have gotten both so expensive and so slow that I'm always weighing whether to hit the local grocery store, grab some ingredients and throw something together at home.

Cooking is also a skill that is easy to improve on and not an inborn genetic property that someone has or doesn't have.

The way people that don't cook talk about cooking you would think it is on the level of work involved in roofing or pouring cement blocks.

I am literally cooking a Thai dish right now. I could have went to the Thai restaurant but tinkering with this dish is actually more fun.

After spending all day 'building' intangible things in a virtual world I really love actually making something real with my hands and then eating it with my wife

Eh, for most restaurants I wold say 5/10. So much restaurant food is just reheated stuff they buy from Sysco.

A 5 minutes walk from my home at the European capital where I live there's a Japanese food restaurant that has a small dine-in area where they removed all tables and just do takeout now. It's not that uncommon.

I’m in California and there is a take out only Dominoes near me.

The first In-n-Out had no seating or parking.