Community Chat

[Tinkrbl44]

@Jordan2 

Great topic!

As a family, we ate out a few times a year.  My parents, however, liked to go out to dinner, just the two of them ... for date night.  

We also went out for the occasional pie a la mode or out for an ice cream cone.  That was always better than sitting in a restaurant.  Dessert is always better, lol.

[AuntG]

Rarely. A restaurant chicken dinner about twice a year and occasional trip to a root beer stand (where the waitresses attached a tray to your window). I recall going to outdoor theaters three times growing up. We lived in a rural area so most meals were home cooked.

[VanSleepy]

I really don't remember going to a "real" sit-down restaurant unless we were on vacation,  but I remember having Chinese food and pizza at home. My mother would also take us to lunch sometimes, but since she didn't drive it had to be somewhere we could walk. That was either a hamburger place or a beef stand.

[LuvSoCal]

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@SurferWife wrote:

We went out to eat every Friday night.  It varied where we went, but it was our Friday night ritual.  Really great memories!! ❤️ 

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@SurferWife This was our ritual as well and always looked forward to it. We alternated between our favorite Italian, Mexican and Chinese restaurants. A couple of times a year we would go to one of the "fancy" places.

[Enufstuff]

  We went out often for dinner on Sunday' s after church. We went to very nice restaurants. Once in a while we would go to Boston's Chinatown for dinner and to do a little shopping in the Chinese import shops. We would find unique and pretty things there. Those shops are all gone now.

  Living near the ocean, sometimes we would go to seafood restaurants in the summertime.

  I remember when I was nine years old, we were on vacation and drove to Quebec. We visited my great grandmother's last living sibling, a brother who was in his nineties. We went to a restaurant for dinner and I expected that we would go to enjoy nice French cuisine. I was

surprised when we went to a Chinese restaurant in Quebec City. Then my parents complained that it was not good Chinese food! I was only nine but I was thinking, "Why would they expect it to be good?" It baffled me why they expected it to be like the food in Boston and why they did'nt choose a French restaurant. But of course, as a child, I didn't say anything.

[Porcelain]

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@PhilaLady1 wrote:

I already posted on this thread but here I am again😀

Just remembered that my Mom and I used to take Philadelphia public transportation to Horn and Hardarts for lunch and used the automat.  Trying to copy a picture of the automat but can't seem to do it on my Kindle.  That's a blast from the past!

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Never got to go to an automat. Oh how I love the idea though. You are so lucky to have been!

[SurferWife]

@LuvSoCal 

Same here!  Being from Texas we loved to go out to eat Mexican food.  When my brother & I got a little older, we would eat Chinese, too.  We had a great cafeteria by our house and at there more than anywhere else because of the variety of food.  As I get older I reminisce so much about my childhood.  I had such a wonderful childhood and miss my mama and daddy so much!  They gave us such a wonderful life. ❤️

[hckynutjohn]

"Eat out a lot"? No, it was very seldom growing up, even on weekends, that we sat at a table and ate as a family. My mother worked 6 days a week, and 2 of those 6 days, included working until her department store closing at 8:30pm.

My eating out was at 12 years old when I started working as a car hop at a drive-in restaurant. We got a hamburger/fries and a small soft drink, for free. We had to keep working while eating. Guess that qualified as "eating out" being it was somewhere other than our home.

hckynut  🇺🇸

[lkat]

I never thought of this before, but I don't remember ever eating out when I was a kid.  I do remember sometimes getting snacks at the drive-in or driving to Dairy Queen to get an ice cream, but I don't remember us going out as a family.  My folks didn't have a lot of money and we basically had the same things every week.  

We never had dessert unless it was white bread, butter and sugar (yuck!) or jello (and I used to eat my jello with milk...eeek!)

I think the first time I had McDonalds was when I was 17 which would've been 1975/76.  That was the first time I had fast food.

There are so many foods I never had until I was an adult and out of my parent's house.  So strange compared to nowadays!

[JeanLouiseFinch]

When I was young we didn't eat out often, but when we did it was usually a Sunday after church and it would be a nice place with tablecloths and cloth napkins.  Once in great awhile, we'd get carry out or go to this diner that had delicious, sloppy burgers, freshly made onion rings, and restaurant made milk shakes where you'd get your glass and the entire mixing canister full of milkshake.  In my teens, we ate out a little more often, but still at nice places.  My dad didn't like fast food.