I love to eat.
Well, obviously we all have to eat, it’s a human necessity. I know some people that only eat out of necessity. #IKnowRight
That’s not me. I love to eat. I would eat all the time if that didn’t mean becoming unnecessarily and unhealthily fat. #NoteToSelf
When I first started dating my (now) husband, I also began to develop a whole new relationship to eating at restaurants, picking up takeaways and ordering home delivery.
Two different points of view
I’m Portuguese and as with a lot of the Portuguese mums, my mum is a great cook. So much so, that my father has always said “I don’t like going to restaurants. Food tastes better at home”.
I totally agree that mum and both my grandmothers’ cooking is amazing. But I’m also aware that my father’s taste buds are quite particular and well… he likes to save money.
Nothing against saving money! I too understand how expensive eating out is like. When I was single, I couldn’t afford it. I even had a great friend once offering to pay for my meal as a convincing argument to join a group dinner.
When you have three kids or a house to pay for or investments to make, it’s probably one of the things you cut out first.
But my husband’s reality has always been a bit different.
His mum’s job was not a stay-at-home-mum like my mum’s job was. Cooking was, understandably, seen as a chore after a day’s work for both of his parents. And despite making some great specialties (that I’ve already tasted) his parents like to go out to eat.
It is also not that expensive to eat out in Portugal: a lunch for two with mains, drink and coffee can cost between 13.00-20.00€. And I don’t mean a McDonald’s or a Nando’s. I mean traditional, yummy stuff.
Eating out
When you’re a couple and both of you work it’s easier to eat out more frequently. And honestly, it can be quite convenient. If both of you are tired when you get home, you might want to spend some quality time either together. Or get on with other things that you need to do around the house.
Once João and I started dating, I became more interested in going out to eat. Firstly, it’s a lovely date night. And secondly, this is London! A place where anyone can choose to eat literally anything, from anywhere in the world, at any time of the day.
We’ve been together for 5 years and last year I noticed that, due to routine and work schedules, we wouldn’t go out on date nights as often anymore. Just-eat, Deliveroo and Uber-eats made it far more convenient to ‘eat out’ without leaving the house. We became kind of lazy. I had also noticed that if we did leave the house for dinner, we would go to the same places over and over again.
Thursdays Date Nights
So I suggested Thursdays Date Nights: every Thursday we would go out and try a restaurant we had never tried before.
The night I first thought of starting this, was the night João surprised me with a fancy dinner to celebrate our 1st month anniversary. You see, we got married last year. And I’ve noticed how, despite not being all that fussed about getting married, he became sweeter and slightly more romantic after marrying me. #NotTryingToBrag #ButItsTrue #AndItsSweet #AndILikeIt #ButDontTellHim
So, since he’s the one that got me into restaurants and appreciating different kinds of food, why not ask him to write the first post about the restaurants we’ve been trying or like to go to?
Hope you enjoy.
Hug,
Millia
UPDATE: My husband wrote the first review of an excellent restaurant we loved – Bob Bob Ricard for our very special date
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