Nice....You guys eat out a lot. ;~)
Peter
If I could turn the clock back, I'd be far more happy to eat at home like I used to do. You get sick of a diet of restaurant food with its over-clever sauces, sparse vegetables, its predictable menu and the noise of fellow diners. I think I would now wear my 'phones even if the music had died, just to cut them all the hell out of my life. I often pray for some honest home-cooking using real materials. I had a hamburger recently - the first in several years - and was amazed to find a pinkish "meat" so milled and refined it might have been paste. No, it was paste and must have come from a tube. Or a large, plastic box. Heysoos! My grandmothers, my mother, my wife all knew that hamburgers were made from
meat that you minced at home, and had that analogue quality called texture!
After a few years of the same few places you know what they produce, you look at their prices over the period and wonder what they do to maintain affordable menu del dia levels. The whole idea of menu del dia is this: provide a good, nourishing daily meal for a workman. It has nothing to do with à la carte where you pay what you deserve. The local yacht club does lobster at €129; no, I don't eat there, but do use the loo if I need to during my daily walks. That gives me a sadistic sort of pleasure. Not the walking, the peeing above my station.
;-)