The question “Do you want to go for a drink sometime?” is basically shorthand for asking someone to go on a date with you. And like so many others, a bar date is my go-to for my first time going out with someone new. Bars, after all, are jovial places that offer a casual atmosphere and a low-stakes way of figuring someone out, as well as easy routines to slip into, providing comfort in what can be a fairly nerve-wracking scenario. You can complain about or compliment the establishment’s house wine, for example. And maybe a few drinks in, you might knock the other person’s knees with yours under the table, to wordlessly show that you’re having a good time, that maybe you might quite like them.
As such, many of my best dates have been bar dates—they’re a good barometer of whether someone is happy to talk nonsense that is complementary to your own nonsense for a few hours, if nothing else—but I don’t think they’re the best type of date you can go on. Because, for me, there’s little that’s more fun and telling in the early stages of dating someone than going to a restaurant with them.
This is partly a personal thing. I am a deeply greedy individual, and I often enjoy getting ready at home—changing my outfit seven times, drowning out whatever crap playlist I’ve shoved on Spotify with my busted hairdryer—as much as the actual night out itself, so I welcome any opportunity to eat something delicious and make an occasion of it. But there are other, more universal pros to dinner dates, too—even if, in my experience, they seem to happen less and less.
I think this is because, where millennial dating is concerned, a lot of the time we’re all competing to seem like we care the least. A restaurant date, therefore, probably seems like a bigger deal or financial commitment than is technically cool (though I would say that these days, a few rounds set you back almost as much as a decent meal out, and you don’t even get dessert at a bar). But even disregarding the (net positive) fact that they tend to foreground booze at least a little bit less than a bar trip, there is also so much more romance, and perhaps even glamour, to a restaurant date. Look at you, coquettishly picking at a bread basket while you wait for the other person to arrive! And is there a person in the world who doesn’t look better in candlelight, their cheeks flushed from a glass of good wine?
I do, however, get the reticence some people have around eating with someone new. Depending on where you’ve planned to go, it can seem a bit overly formal (though my solution to that would simply be: don’t go anywhere that feels too uptight), and maybe even a bit retro. And it does also make sense that women, in particular, might have some hang-ups about eating in front of potential partners during the early stages of dating, because despite “strides” made around the general idea of accepting one’s body, our culture’s messaging about the relationship a woman ought to have to eating is still profoundly confusing. If I open my Instagram Explore page right now, in fact, 50 percent of the videos I’m served are showing me “FIVE LONDON CHEESE PULLS TO DIE FOR” while the other half are titled “What I Eat In A Day: 1600 Calories For Fat Loss”.
It’s also fair to say that there is something quite revealing about eating—a basic human function—in front of someone you hope will find you alluring. I often think that people “get the ick” because another person has revealed themselves to be a human being with the same needs as everyone else, with ways of fulfilling those needs that break the heady spell of desire and fantasy we project in the early stages of dating. By extension, eating, which comes with the very banal dangers of loud chewing or getting sauce on your chin, might represent something that feels too intimate, too vulnerable, for a getting-to-know-you meeting.
But while I don’t advocate for forced intimacy, there’s something about going out to eat with a date that can make for a cute bonding experience, and one that you don’t really get by just going for a drink. It’s fun to choose dishes together, and to call the other person a baby if they say they don’t like anchovies. It’s even more fun to look at them and maybe even start to desire them a little bit over the enforced separation of a dining table.
Which is to say: eating with someone is, fundamentally, sexy. If you can square it in your mind that true sexiness isn’t about sitting opposite someone, sipping a clear drink with neatly applied lipstick, then you can accept that it is actually the opposite—it is bodily, rooted in pleasure. There’s a sensuality in allowing a person to watch you as you dig your nails underneath the skin of a prawn to peel it, and then lick your fingers; in being made to laugh just as you’re shoveling a cartoon tornado of spaghetti into your mouth; in ice cream with two spoons.
Many of the most important platonic connections in my life have been to some degree forged through eating together and sharing food. This act does imply a closeness, and everyone has varying levels of comfort with that, but it also implies a generosity that can sometimes be missing from dating right now. There’s nothing wrong at all with “going for a drink sometime”, but in the end, there’s something in that old chestnut: the way to a person’s heart is through their stomach.