This chapter presents a detailed description of some of the minutiae of the experience of dining out: what exactly did people eat?; how did this come to be decided?; where, when and with whom did they eat?; and to what extent did they prepare for the occasion in advance? The purpose is to survey the diversity of the experience. The evidence comes from questions asked of both respondents and interviewees about the very last occasion on which they had eaten a main meal away from home.

The chapter focuses on the ways in which the promise of variety is experienced and used. Some would maintain that increased variety of choice is the greatest benefit of consumer culture and would therefore welcome the fact that in the field of food there is now more choice than ever. Such a claim might reasonably be advanced on the basis of the contents of supermarkets and on the number of commercial outlets selling cooked dishes of many sorts. Indeed, according to Mennell's (1985) influential diagnosis, ‘increased variety’ is one of the two dominant trends of food provisioning in the twentieth century and the spread of restaurant-going is a significant element of the shift.

Wood (1995) is sceptical, arguing that some of this variety is illusory, a pretence wherein commercial organisations, for reasons of profitability, tend to offer increasingly standardised and uniform food and service.