Six months back in the dating game after a decade of relationships and the thing that fascinates me the most is the psychology of date food. Let’s face it, most people refuse dinner for a first date, very 1950s and the potential for awkwardness scarily high from the moment you sit down. But at some point we’ve got to refuel and what we choose to eat says a lot:
Pizza
In theory, easy right? But oh the possibilities. In my experience dates love it if you say you just fancy pizza, but the potential problems rise faster than sourdough in a wood-fired oven. I’ve learnt that boys who order Domino’s still need to grow up; boys that order one between two don’t understand women (we eat) and boys that go to Waitrose and buy reduced, spicy beef numbers when you’ve mentioned an aversion to the very hot are only ever going to become friends. Were they not listening to anything you said? Are you not worth more than £2.83? (Obviously, I speak from experience: the yellow reduced label stared at me. I stared at him, wondering if the sex we’d just had was really that bad).
Michelin-starred tasting menu
The obvious assumption is that dates who want to eat high-end are just Flash Gordons but sometimes it turns out, they live in their car, order Too Good To Go all week and splash their savi on fancy meals at the weekend. I was taken to a posh, minimalist place in Bristol by someone not long ago. We sat down in a library-ish quiet. “Do you bring all your dates here?” I joked, imagining an extremely expensive bill. “The last one, yeah,” he said, “but she wanted the vegetarian menu so I had to get that too and I wanted to try the meat version.”
“Wow,” I replied. “I was joking.” What I realised then was that people who like tasting menus care more about the food and the status than the conversation - every few mins someone interrupted us to describe ingredients so our chat never took off. I’d also have preferred pizza, but he wouldn’t have known that because he never asked.
People who like tasting menus care more about the food and the status than the conversation
Home-cooked dinners
Comfort food in a recent scenario was mac ‘n’ cheese. Date two. Nice. But made with margarine not butter by a guy who has a fridge full of turkey mince? That tells you your new fling spends far too much time in the gym. To be fair he described himself as a ‘CrossFit w*nker’ on his Bumble profile. Another guy went for pheasant, causing our first argument when I refused to eat the tuna-sashimi-coloured middle. His belief that he was a master chef translated into a lot of arrogance about other things I’m not sure he should have been quite so arrogant about either.
Vegan food
“Do you want anything?” asked the ethical non-monogamist with a partner who knew he was dating other people before Christmas. “I’m gooood,” I replied, looking at his vegan box in a Notting Hill deli. This guy was a liberal, eco-warrior who used the phrase “pied-a-terre” for a bedsit that smelt of his elderly parents. We’re friends now but I’ll never forget asking where the bedroom was and watching him pull a bed out of a cupboard.
Breakfast
Scrambled eggs - everyone can cook those right? Firstly let’s appreciate the dates that do offer breakfast. But let’s none of us ever say the words: “I make the best scrambled eggs EVER.” If you say that, you’ve really gotta pull something out the bag. Dill. Chili. Anything?
My friend Aldi and I worked out eggs were directly linked to someone’s style in bed. “Long and slow scrambled eggs are always better, always wetter,” he told me while I tried not to puke and laugh simultaneously. Genius.
