In A Restaurant Rut

Candlelit tables, fairy lights on exposed brick walls, and a great wooden bar—that was my view while sitting at a new bistro in Williamsburg with my best friend on a Saturday night at the end of April. I’d flagged the restaurant a month earlier, and we finally found a night to go. We chose a few dishes to share: stuffed dates, mezze dips, and lamb. When we got our food, we portioned it in two, scooping up the sauces with bread and digging into beautifully plated food. But each bite left me feeling like it was a work of function: unexcited and still hungry, I felt like I would have rather made a grilled cheese at home. 

Growing up, eating out used to be a treat. But when I moved to New York City in 2021, fresh-eyed, running a small food blog, and with disposable income, I started dining out like it was my full-time job and organized my social calendar around where to go to eat. Now, I am not sure where that love for dining out has gone. The truth of the matter is, I am in a restaurant rut.

A restaurant rut, as I’ve tried to define it for myself, is a period in which no dining establishment feels appealing or distinguishable to an eater. I should say now that I don’t believe this rut will last forever, and even among my friends, I realize that I may not be alone in my disillusionment. I don’t think it’s particularly unusual for seasoned New York diners.

For me, eating at restaurants has become exhausting. It’s turned into a monotonous routine, and an expensive one at that. There are only so many happy hours one can try before the question of “beer or wine or cocktail” becomes irksome. Cocktails were the first menu item that made me realize I was bored with dining out. How many combinations of alcohol, spirit, and syrup can there be? 

Cocktails are the perfect way to see a broader trend unfolding: New restaurants seem to overemphasize the use of “exotic” flavors that boast a richness, texture, or flavor profile most people wouldn’t incorporate in their daily diet. But did I really need a margarita-inspired highball with Irish whiskey that tasted like peach pie? Concoctions like that leave me wondering what I’m even drinking. So, I’ve started to abandon cocktail bars. Now I prefer going to my local pub and asking, “What is your cheapest beer?” Personally, I love a Miller-High Life (it’s not called the “Champagne of Beers” for nothing.) 

A continuation of this problem is that many top-rated restaurants tend to serve an overcomplicated menu. There is a surplus of these gastro-pubs that serve a combination of fusion dishes (for instance, Korean Tapas or Lebanese Ramen); at first, it was exciting to see how regional ingredients and preparation styles were combined. But now menus feel like compilations of buzzwords to sell us on seemingly fancy flavors or richness, disconnected from the cultures the dishes are inspired by. My friend made the analogy that eating out all the time and reading menus is like looking at maximalist art: You want to be able to appreciate the intricacies of each piece, but if you covered every wall in your home with Pollock, you may miss the days the walls were blank.

Over just one week of dining out, I saw menus offering Nepalese tacos, creme brulee pancakes, Seoul-style pizza, and truffle bruschetta. I’ve been desensitized to specialty foods and oversaturated with choice, and maybe it would be fair to say that I took the joy of dining out for granted. 

When I used to have cravings, it felt like a special occasion to indulge in them. Getting invited to go out to dinner was a special proposition. Now, the problem is not just what restaurants are serving or how they’re serving it, but the fact that my body is having an adverse reaction to outside food all the time. It can’t be overstated that restaurant food is much richer than dishes you’d make at home. There is something to be said about cooking at home—my morning routine of assembling my bowl of Greek yogurt and fresh strawberries with honey keeps me grounded. The joy I now get from eating is when I’ve cooked for or with others.

I’m not swearing restaurants off for good just yet, but there aren’t enough meals to be wasted on feeling disappointed. So, for the rest of the summer, I’m committing to staying simple. 

It is a privilege to be able to have disposable income to choose what and how much I want to eat every day, and it’s not something that I take for granted. As a result, I am choosing to put that money to different use this summer. I want to buy restaurant meals only when I can’t make them at home and to focus on buying local, good, ingredients that will taste great in their simplest forms. I’m talking about putting big, juicy heirloom tomatoes together with olive oil and good bread, learning how to grill nice meat or fish, making stone fruit desserts that taste like summer, and getting friends together for lots and lots of picnics with all my favorite snacks. 

Though I might not always want to admit it, my parents may have had a point about keeping eating out as a special treat. I’m looking forward to being invited to go to dinner and feeling excited again - but for now, it’s going to be a summer of focusing on the simple things, and when it’s time to return to dining out again, I’ll make sure I don’t over-do it.