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> and the British, as a rule, don't do to-go portions from a restaurant. This isn't true at all.
by politelemon 3y ago
> and the British, as a rule, don't do to-go portions from a restaurant.
This isn't true at all.
- arghwhat 3y agoIf it's anything like Denmark, it's just that nobody local ever does it, and so we never learn that it is an option. 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.
- mock-possum 3y agoOne of the somewhat delightful things I’ve learned as an adult is - you can just ask people for anything, and they’ll do it, much more often than you might think.
- renegade-otter 3y agoShamelessness is a superpower :)
- swexbe 3y agoPeople will even start to like you more for it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect
- hooo 3y agoI had never heard of this- thanks for linking!
- sneak 3y agoI remember the time I was at the Ocha on Embarcadero in downtown SF and I saw some older VC type guy order his shrimp pad thai with no tails. 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.)
- pests 3y agoYou are paying them! I still struggle with customizations and usually like to try things as envisioned by the chef, but some food textures I just can't do. Unless it's a place with a certain vision/theme/morals or artsy food, they just want to make you happy.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pests 3y agoSo true. 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.
- SoftTalker 3y agoFor Danes, half the experience of a meal is the presentation. They would not want to eat an already half-eaten meal out of a styrofoam box.
- arghwhat 3y agoAs a Dane from central Copenhagen, I'm not sure where you'd get that idea from. 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.
- IanCal 3y agoI've only ever seen this done once here.
- robin_reala 3y agoI’ve only ever seen it done in pizza places that already have takeaway boxes available.
- Symbiote 3y agoPizza places are also one of the few places in Europe where the portion is often too large. Otherwise I think the rare occasion where someone requests it is when a younger child has hardly touched their meal.
- diggan 3y ago> I’ve only ever seen it done in pizza places that already have takeaway boxes available. 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.
- IshKebab 3y agoIt is completely true. People do it very occasionally, but not like in America.
- egeozcan 3y agoIn Germany, particularly in Hesse from what I've experienced, restaurant staff might take offense if you eat less than half of your meal and refuse to have the leftovers packed up. Just last week, a restaurant in Gießen went above and beyond by including an extra bowl of fruit salad alongside the remainder of our meal. That, I will remember a long time, especially after my wife's startling reaction to discovering a kiwi in the package – she's terrified of the fruit for some reason :)
- Archelaos 3y agoI can confirm that. The cultural attitude in Germany is that food should not be wasted. One of my favourite café bars in Heidelberg, when it closes, gives away the unsold pastries to the people who are still there -- sometimes a whole bag full.
- MandieD 3y agoThere are still a lot of Germans around who remember not having enough to eat as children in the late 40s. Yes, their parents had done, or at least allowed, terrible things, but they were children. Meat was especially in short supply, and my 85 year old aunt-in-law is pretty sure they had rat a few times. 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.
- gregors 3y agoCan confirm, my parents grew up starving in the ashes of WW2. My mother hid canned food under her bed, in her closets, everywhere for all of her life. It always annoyed me and when I'd ask her about it she always answered the same, "I hope you never know what it's like to starve".
- alex_duf 3y agoIn the UK, I never have seen it done or done it myself especially compared to when I lived in North America where it was standard.
- jayceedenton 3y agoYes it is. Asking your waiter to wrap up the rest of your food to go almost never happens in the UK. 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.
- lnxg33k1 3y agoAs italian, this kills me, what if there’s leftover? The restaurant just throws it away? Food? For class snobbery? Like the restaurant can’t reuse it, no? So it’s just thrown away?
- CogitoCogito 3y agoI assume people would just adapt to the culture by generally not ordering more than they will eat.
- Dalewyn 3y agoThat's kind of tedious to do when a single menu item here in America is usually, to describe it aptly, infamously yuuuuuge.
- CogitoCogito 3y agoWe're not talking about America, we're talking about the UK.
- Dalewyn 3y agoApologies, the original story was about Simon getting overwhelmed by American servings so that context stuck.
- KingOfCoders 3y agoIn Germany it is also not common, but some people do it (like my mother)
- ergonaught 3y agoDude dies and y’all are talking about to-go portions.
- jll29 3y agoSo now we have covered PostgreSQL and food waste, how about the topic of avoiding small aircraft for transportation (because they are so much more risky compared to larger commercial aircraft)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatalities_from_aviation_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatalities_from_aviati...
- whelp_24 3y agoHe was the sole occupant, and he was doing touch and gos (ie practice) not transportation.
- politelemon 3y agoThe original posted thread is talking about it, and making a sweeping generalization, I am commenting on that generalization.
- robertlagrant 3y ago> This isn't true at all. 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.
- sgt 3y agoThen we put it in the fridge, never to be eaten.
- robertlagrant 3y agoTrue :) That's why South Africans have US-style double fridges. To store uneaten restaurant food.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gwd 3y agoA few years ago my family went to a pub / Thai restaurant, and the portions were larger than we were expecting. I asked the owner if he could put the leftover food in a box for me to take away; he said, "Sorry, I can't do that -- what if you took it home and then got sick?" I knew that they also did take-away; so I countered, "Could you give me a box and then forget about it?" He smiled and got me some take-away boxes, then left so he wouldn't see what I did with them. So, it was sufficiently unusual that I had to be creative to make it happen.
- kitd 3y agoAs a rule ... it decidedly is. Yes, it can be done, but the overwhelming majority of time, it isn't,
- jnsie 3y agoI was surprised he'd never been to a chain restaurant. They're not exactly lacking in the UK or Western Europe in general...