Dining out with family and friends: An expensive affair

Dining out is a great way of relaxing. On one hand, it allows you to bond with your close ones and on the other, it gives your spouse also a break.  Bonding can happen with your friends over drinks in a bar or with family in a nice specialty restaurant like an Italian or Mughlai.

Wednesdays and Fridays are days for friends. A heavy workload at the office and a never-satisfying boss calls for a gathering of like-minded colleagues. Beer serves not only as a medicine to give you instant relief but also as an aphrodisiac to make you ready for the boss the next day.

Dining out with family is a great stress buster

On the other hand, the family is eagerly waiting for spending time with you over the weekend. And what better way than dining out with them. It not only gives your wife a break from the mundane day-to-day cooking but also gives every family member a reason to dress up and start debating. The debate happens on the choice of restaurant. Son wants to go to Mughlai but the daughter is keen on Italian. Meanwhile, after a couple of drinks at home, you are only concerned about who will drive to the restaurant. Spouse comes to your rescue. She not only breaks the stalemate on the choice of venue but also volunteers to drive.

You land up at the restaurant of your family’s choice. Being a weekend, traffic is heavy not only on the road but also on the joint. A lot of hungry souls have come for dining out with families and standing in the queue. But lady luck has been smiling on you lately and you get a table for 4 within ten minutes.

Dining out starts with a bottle of mineral water

You are comfortably placed on a round table with 4 chairs. The attendant, who is purely working on a monthly sales target and incentive, immediately places a bottle of mineral water on your table. Surprisingly, the restaurant doesn’t stock the regular brands which are priced at 1/3^rd the price of a brand which it serves called “Catch”. You know the smartness of the waiter and ask him to serve regular filtered water.

The next in line is the extra-large menu card which the table attendant places on your table. Since the table has not been designed to accommodate such large menu cards, he just leaves two behind. The large-sized menu carries an extra-large description of each gastronomic dish with larger-than-life-size prices. One look at the menu and you are clear that you will avail the easy EMI scheme offered by your credit card company.

A drinks round kicks off the dining out session

The attendant is a smart cookie. He has already smell liquor in spite of your strong perfume halo. He keeps a drinks menu in front of you. You are in a dilemma. The devil in you wants a drink desperately but the angel sitting across the table wants you to show restraint. You ignore the warnings and ask your son if he wants a glass of beer which he keenly accepts. You now get a moral authorization of ordering a drink for yourself to give company to your son.

Your spouse and daughter are contended by ordering a bowl of soup for themselves. You look for the attendant servicing your table and wave to him. But he is extremely busy attending a table with a much bigger group. Drinks are overflowing and dishes are being ordered as if they are on the house.

The attendant arrives at your table to take an order

After 3 reminders, the attendant finally arrives at your table. He immediately pulls out a diary and a pencil to write down the order. While your family is still undecided on what to order for snacks, you take the advantage and place an order for your drink, the beer, and the soup. You don’t want a large break between the last drink and this one.

Inspired by the cost-cutting in your organisation, you use the same technique while placing the order. You go for an IMFL brand and check if there is happy hour pricing. The attendant can now make out that the table is occupied by a tax-burdened middle-class family that will not give him enough revenues. He takes the drinks order and excuses himself on the pretext of taking order from the party table.

Building consensus on the dishes to order is the most challenging job

Your spouse passes the menu card asking you to decide. Seeing the pricing on the menu card you can make out that dining out is now a luxury. One of the best ways to check the price of any restaurant is to check the price of Roti and Dal.  The reason being that Roti and Dal are the two items for which the Indian middle class has to work hard day in and day out. The moment you see that a chapati or a nan (Indian bread) is priced at Rs 100 plus and the dal is priced at Rs 400 plus, you can make out that the overheads of the restaurant are high.

The spouse can guess your predicament and comes to your rescue. She orders the food and saves you from the ignominy of ordering the lowest priced items on the menu. Being a smart Indian housewife she knows how best to utilize limited resources and places an order which makes every member happy.  Butter Chicken, Dal Makhni accompanied by Chapati and Nan for yourself and son while Thai red curry with steamed rice for herself and pasta in red sauce for daughter.

The order confuses the attendant

A combination of Mughlai, Thai, and Continental confuses the attendant. But then this is a restaurant where every family member exercises his fundamental right, unlike home where the menu options are limited with a green vegetable and a dal, a must every day. Kids are free to indulge in their favorite food outside once in a while.

You enjoy the meal and leave happy after settling the bill. The only thing which leaves a bad taste in your mouth is the 10% service charge which the government has asked the restaurants to scrap. But then who listens to the government. Meanwhile, you see that the party at the next table is still going on. You wonder who are these people who are ordering so lavishly without bothering about the bill.

People enjoying dinner in a restaurant can be classified in the following category

• The Connoisseurs -The Senior level of corporate companies who get an unlimited entertainment allowance. So if you see people ordering Chivas and Single Malt in a restaurant you can guess they belong to this category.
• The Extravagant – The middle level who get limited entertainment allowance. People enjoying with families or with a group of friends who are ordering the food items lavishly can be classified in this category. Normally such a group tends to order more than required which then gets packed in a doggy bag.
• The Over Indulgent -Group of friends belonging to Generation Y (also called Millennial) or Generation Z category. They generally go Dutch and utilize the happy hours offering to the maximum. They are also Zomato Gold members and are primarily to be blamed for the rift between the Restaurant associations and Zomato.
• Self-financed – People belonging to this group are the ones who spend the maximum time on the menu card to unravel the mystery behind the high prices. These are families who are there to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries of a member.
• Kitty Party – This group is self-explanatory. They are an entertaining lot not for others but themselves. They can be seen in a restaurant at odd hours during day time playing Tambola.

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