Rules for eating on a first date

I used to be able to undo a bra clasp with one hand. Without looking. That's right, reach around the back with one hand while the other was occupied, lift it up off the skin, squeeze it together and then release. It wasn't something I intentionally practiced, nor was I some modern day Casanova, but somewhere in my mid-twenties there had been enough girlfriends, enough evenings, enough attempts at undoing that unique clasp that it just happened.


Then, for a brief period it was kind of my thing. Didn't brag about it, just knew I could do it. A couple of women noticed, one of them became my wife. Of course, once I was married it quickly became a useless skill. I'm guessing its now sort of like my Italian. If I go to Rome tomorrow I might be able to ask for a table for two, but I might just as likely insult the maître de.


See how easy that was? You're a person of dating age and you've likely been eating food in the company of other human beings for a least a couple of years now, right? Ideally without causing the people in your immediate vicinity to vomit, faint, weep or cringe?


Good. You are ready to order food on a date. Go get 'em, tiger!


And yet, magazines and websites abound with lists of verboten fare like spaghetti (purportedly too messy), corn on the cob (apparently all the rage on menus in cities I never visit), soup (dinged as being "too loud," but really, shouldn't you have learned to eat without slurping by now?), beans (tee hee - gas!), and raw garlic (but that's because most fashionable young people are dating vampires nowadays). I've also seen cautions against asparagus because of its notorious olfactory effects upon urine, but if you're in a position to know that about your date, you've clearly made it way past the dinner table.



Other resources caution against ordering anything too "weird," spicy or hard to pronounce. But if someone is going to judge you for digging Szechuan peppercorn monkfish liver bruschetta (which you mispronounced with a "sh" in the middle instead of a "sk"), they are not a person off of whose pier you ought to be fishing anyhow. Skip dessert, say a polite goodnight and a cast out a line for someone who enjoys watching you being happy.


What you or your date actually ends up ordering is of infinitely less importance than how it's ordered. It's often said that how your date treats the waitress is a fairly clear indicator of how they'll treat you six months down the line. That may be true, but if they're being a big ol' jerk to the waitstaff right this moment, there's no reason to stick around and test out the theory. As Dave Barry said, "If someone is nice to you but rude to the waiter, they are not a nice person."


If it's too awkward to end the evening right then and there (which I did once after a date wouldn't stop embarrassing the sweet, young waitress by ordering his piña coladas as "penis colossus"), please feel empowered to go right ahead and order the biggest, stinkiest, messiest meal the kitchen can muster. And definitely suggest that you split the check; have enough cash on hand for at least your half so you can make a quick getaway and leave a good, solid tip.


But as for those food rules, one of the best first dates I ever had came about because the gentleman and I ignored a big ol’ don’t. He and I had met online and agreed to go to a now-closed Vietnamese place in New York City's Chinatown. Crab curry sounded like a fantastic idea until it arrived and we realized that it came served still in the hard shell, slathered in nuclear yellow curry sauce, with nary a cracking device or metal implement in sight. We looked at each other warily and then just dove in, using our fingers and chopsticks to coax the meat from the shells.


By the end of the meal, we were both covered from fingertip to scalp with pungent curry sauce and had a first kiss on the street outside as he picked a shard of shell out of my hair. My previous boyfriend wouldn’t have set foot in the slightly divey restaurant, let alone used his hands to eat.


Crab curry man and I ended up dating for two and a half years after that and we still get together to eat from time to time - now with his girlfriend and my husband in tow.


Sometimes we even use utensils.