I have been thinking on how to celebrate my birthday, I thought of inviting my parents to my favorite restaurant. When I brought it up, they were all upset “why don’t you invite us to your home? Why don’t you cook for us? Restaurant is all reheated food, home cooked fresh food is much better” etc. We have lived in Europe for almost my whole life, I don’t really understand what’s wrong with going out to eat or why they expect me to invite them to my house and prepare a festive meal on my birthday.
I don’t know, man, my Russian parents go out to a restaurant for every single occasion.
Edit: something occurred to me. Are yours from a small town or a rural area? Mine are from Moscow. I have a feeling that might matter.
There’s a common old world view that going to a restaurant is either for rich people with too much money or for stupid people that don’t know how to cook. So it’s more a class based frugality thing that then also is a comfort thing because doing something outside the norm would be to be in public and not be in a private space where everyone can be themselves and follow the usual family dynamics. Restaurants are also commonly a special occasion thing too but seems your folks don’t have the memo on that one. Devils advocate, they probably want you to save your money and want more quality time with you and give you the “opportunity” to host them as they have done for you and others in the past and probably they enjoyed doing so?
Perhaps they should cook for you instead. That would be a nice thing to do for their child’s bday since they dislike restaurants so much.
They usually cook when I come over, I guess now they expect me to return the favor
On your birthday, you get to pick
What does that have to do with being russian?
I get the sense that it’s very common or at least used to be common in Soviet Union to always invite your friends to your home and treat them to home made meals when there was something to celebrate. It seems that going out to restaurants used to be not an option for whatever reason, but I can only guess.
In Soviet Russia the restaurant is you!
You do understand that in communist Russia there were very few restaurants, and only the select few could afford to get in and eat there? Eating out wasn’t a thing at all.
My Russian parents go out for every occasion because they would rather have someone else cook and clean. Plus the food is much more diverse and usually better cooked.
Judging by how now in Russia there are hundreds of thousands of restaurants, I would say that not all Russian parents prefer home cooked meals. But yours do.
That’s not uniquely Russian.
I have many russian (+ukrainian/kazakhstan etc.) friends and in fact they have a somewhat different attitude to food and restaurants as compared to europeans.
From my point of view they enjoy preparing food together, everyone brings something with them (salad, pickles, vodka… all of course self made), whereas in european countries I feel its more expected that the host provides the food already on the table or you go to a restaurant.
Depends one where you live. In the US where I live until you get to $50/person or more all restaurant meals are exactly as your parents say - reheated in some way. Even at that high price level many of the meals are the same reheated things the cheaper ones are serving with better arrangement, but at least then some things are cooked yourself.
You live in Europe - there are some great restaurants there that are cheaper. However there are also a number of reheated garbage just like we have in the US.
It isn’t hard to learn to cook for yourself, and once you do it is hard to see why people pay so much money for just garbage food. But people do all the time and don’t see anything wrong with it - some even call it good.
how do you know when someone is needlessly cruel and violent to vulnerable individuals don’t worry they never stop telling you ha ha ha cool name dude
Well said, jerkface
I mean, your handle is a bit… offensive? Dumb? Idiotic?
