Today I was exchanging emails with Maureen Mackey over at The Fiscal Times about what we were going to order for a lunch meeting. I was mulling all the options when I had a sudden thought: why am I spending time mulling these options?
It’s a good question. When I was growing up, my family did not go out to eat very often, so to some degree, I still see restaurant meals as special. I want to make the best food choice possible. After all, it may be another month before I go out again!
But this level of mental energy is not really compatible with my current I-have-a-book-coming-out-next-month life, which involves a reasonable number of lunch or breakfast meetings, meals eaten out for sheer convenience, and delivered meals from various restaurants on other nights.
So I am learning to tell myself this is not my last supper. I will eat restaurant food again. Soon. Possibly for my next meal. There are very few foods I actively dislike. I don’t have any allergies. Therefore, it just doesn’t matter what I order. I should stop spending more than 2 seconds of my 168 hours pondering these choices.
Thus when Maureen helpfully stated that she (and some others) were ordering chicken Caesar salads, I quickly decided to have one too. With the default dressing. I think I might start just ordering the second entree on the menu from now on. That will give me some variety, but free up mental energy to focus on, oh, the actual meeting. Rather than all the myriad things I could have chosen but didn’t.
My theory is that every restaurant has one best thing on the menu, so once you’ve figure out what that is, there’s no need ever to contemplate ordering anything else. Diner waitresses and diner regulars already know this; once you become a regular, the waitress automatically brings you your usual without even asking you, saving time all round.
I (when I’m not in college) live in Pittsburgh. We have this place called Eat N Park. When I go there with friends, they always ponder over the menu, debating on what they want to get (as if they haven’t been there 3 other times that week looking at the same menu). I, on the other hand, order the same thing every time. While I know diversity in foods is important to some degree, I know what I like, so why waste my time staring at the menu. Because I’m not looking at the menu, I am able to talk to my other friends who also order the same things every time, and we are able to socially connect more than those who are focused on figuring out what they want to eat (in the end ordering something they’ve had many times…*sigh*).