Restaurant Games

Even though my wife and I both like to cook, mealtime can get a little boring when you are retired and spend a lot of time at home.  So we like to vary our menu by eating lunch out once or twice a week.  Our favorite restaurants are one of a kind places and we like to try new ones so that each meal is an adventure because we have no idea what the food will be like.  We are fortunate in that the area in which we live is a melting pot that provides the opportunity to sample the cuisines of many cultures and ethnic groups.  There are a lot of one-off eateries and local chains that range from glitzy four star restaurants high atop buildings downtown to funky little mom and pop cafes and bistros tucked into strip malls or hidden in plain sight in small towns off the highway.

It seems as though there are always new restaurants popping up and many times old favorites fade away before we realize it.   One day as my wife and I lingered over lunch with a couple of good friends someone suggested that it would be possible to eat at a different restaurant on every outing and never eat at the same one twice.  At first we laughed at that notion, but eventually we decided to put it to the test.  Our plan was to work our way through the alphabet, eating at a different restaurant each time, but choosing one whose name started with the next letter in alphabetic sequence.  My wife and I volunteered to choose the “A” restaurant.  Our friends made the “B” selection and we alternated that way for the rest of the list.

We set up a few rules to help us make our choices.  We thought that we would get the best local flavor by avoiding national chains, although we did agree to include restaurants that only have a presence in the local area, even though they may have more than one location.  The four of us are retired, so we usually meet for lunch or brunch during the week.  For this reason we made it a rule that we would only eat at places that are open at lunch time and we would only meet on weekdays.  Since we all have some commitments that make it difficult to travel too far at that time of day, we limited our selections to restaurants that we could reach in an easy sixty to ninety minute drive.  In general we chose eateries that none of us had ever been to in the past, but occasionally the choosing couple picked one that they had visited previously but which was new to the other couple.  We tried to be sensitive to each other's eating preferences, but part of the fun of going to a different restaurant for each meal is trying new places and eating a variety of foods, so we all agreed to abide by the other couple's choice even if that meant going to a restaurant that served things that one or more of us wasn't real fond of.

It took us two years, but we managed to work our way through the alphabet with only one cheat.  We could not find a lunch restaurant with a name starting with “X”.  So we used that as a wild card to pick any place that the choosing couple wanted.  We had a lot of fun and ate a lot of good, and sometimes not so good, food.  Along the way we passed the game on to other friends across the country and even some in other countries.  Once we reached the end of the alphabet, though, it was kind of a let down for us.  So we started another lunchtime game where each couple picked ten restaurants that they had been to but that the other couple had not.  We put all of the names in a hat and, after each meal, we took turns pulling out the name of the next eatery we would visit.  We worked our way all the way through that list too.  Now we are working on a list of ten ethnic restaurants.  Each couple has picked five restaurants.  The rules for this game are:

1. Each couple has to pick five different types of ethnic restaurants.
2. Each restaurant has to be one that the other couple has never been to.  
3. The restaurants can't be national chains and must be within our 90-minute driving range.
4. Because at least one of the restaurants that my wife and I picked is only open for dinner and one of the restaurants that our friends picked was only open on the weekend, we allowed exceptions to our normal rule of only going for lunch during the week.

We are just starting on that list as I write this.  So far we have eaten at forty-eight different restaurants over the last three years or so and, even though we still have eight restaurants to go in the current set, we are already trying to decide on the theme for the next restaurant game.  Maybe we'll just eat at mobile restaurants.