Taking food home and not making it awkward

Started 16 February 2026 · 9 replies · 72 hearts · read 1.6k times

AmbroseYork, UK · 16 February 2026

5 months ago

A question rather than an update: Taking food home and not making it awkward

The logistics of this are defeating me more than the medicine is.

Every piece of advice I read appears to have been written for somebody with a completely different week from mine, so I am asking people whose weeks look like this.

Practical question, and possibly a silly one, but the logistics of this are defeating me considerably more than the medicine is.

I would like to know what other people say when asked, because my current answer is too long and invites more questions.

I will come back and say what I settled on, in case it is useful to the next person asking this.

DelphiThessaloniki, GR

Something practical: I sit near the end of the table if I can, because it is much easier to be less observed there.

NoorFacilitatorSingapore

I want to slow this down slightly. Every household described in a thread like this is real, and not one of those arrangements transfers whole to anybody else, which is why the detail matters more than the conclusion.

OttiHarrogate, UK

My partner orders something we can share when he senses it is a difficult evening, without ever making it a thing, and it is quietly brilliant.

7me too 8

GwilymCaernarfon, UK

What Otti described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

The wine question comes up in this circle a lot and mine changed considerably, and having something else in the glass removed the discussion.

TavitaApia, WS

My experience is that this got easier in month eight and has been unremarkable since. It is genuinely a phase for most people.

NolCork, IE

I would have written the same thing a year ago, word for word.

5me too 3

Bell ANorwich, UK

Nol, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

The business dinner was the last thing I got comfortable with, and what solved it was simply doing three of them.

NoorFacilitatorSingapore

If you come back later and say what you actually ended up doing, that is the post the next person reads. Threads that stop are the ones that leave somebody stranded.

OsgarKillarney, IE

Reading Nol, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

Starters as a main is the whole of my strategy and it has never once been remarked upon in about forty restaurants.

6me too 7