Sandi White was on a date, and it seemed to be going well – she’d been set up by a friend with a “super attractive” man and they were sitting at a table at Toronto’s Paris Paris restaurant chatting through drinks.
“Do you want to get something to eat?” her date proposed, and White, a 46-year-old hairstylist, said yes.
Their conversation turned to soccer, and White mentioned her daughter played at a high level. She confessed she wished she understood the sport better so she could get more enjoyment out of watching it.
“Um … you kick the ball? Into the net?” her date said condescendingly.
White was immediately turned off.
“You know what, I’m going to have dinner with my daughter,” she said, and left before ordering. She soon implemented a new set of rules for blind dates, chief among them: never meet at a restaurant.
“If you’re going to eat with someone, you’re guaranteed spending an hour and a half together,” she said. “You suddenly want to leave but you’re waiting for the bill and that’s taking a long time. You’re waiting to pay and that’s taking a long time. And it’s torturous. You’re not having a good time with this person.”
The nature of dating has been radically transformed in the past decade, fuelled by the popularity of dating apps. With thousands of potential matches at one’s fingertips, singles are willing to meet up faster and more frequently, and that’s changed what a typical first date looks like.
Fewer people are choosing restaurants as a location. Some, like White, are gravitating toward bars or cafés because it’s easier to beat a fast retreat if things don’t go well. Inflation has also made dining out significantly more expensive than it was prepandemic.
A September survey of 41,294 global users of the dating app Bumble found that nearly half of Canadian users polled preferred shorter first dates as a “vibe check” on a new match. A 2022 study of 5,000 American singles commissioned by Match (which owns Tinder, Hinge and Plenty of Fish) found 84 per cent preferred a “casual” first date, with one-quarter saying they preferred coffee or drinks to a full meal.
For many, going out for dinner with someone you’re just getting to know is simply too much pressure.
Marc Basque, 35, felt this way when he was on a first date with a woman at a Mexican restaurant in Toronto. They’d already ordered food when it dawned on Basque, who works for a national 2SLGBTQIA+ organization, that he was not attracted to his date. He felt trapped. He overcompensated and began to pepper the woman with many questions. It soon felt like the world’s longest job interview.
When it comes to paying for first dates, Basque says if the date is successful, he’s game to split the bill. But if the date is bad, he prefers to cover the whole bill as a way of apologizing for wasting the person’s time. In those cases he hopes to stay under three figures.
“I don’t know if this makes me sound cheap but over $100 on a first date? That would be disastrous,” he said. Going on a few first dates a month – especially bad ones – can add up quickly.
Restaurants were dealt a massive blow at the start of the decade from pandemic lockdowns, and those that survived have faced an enormous rise in operating expenses, from the cost of ingredients to labour. Restaurants have raised menu prices to stay afloat, but it’s turned off many would-be diners. The average spend-per-person at Canadian restaurants in 2023 was $56, and one-third of diners reported that a restaurant raising its prices would have a significant impact on their decision to dine there in the future, according to a survey of 1,000 Canadians by Touch Bistro.
For those who are game to meet at a restaurant, the trend is toward more casual establishments. But once there, the ambiance can kill the vibe: stark overhead halogen lighting at a noodle shop, the spirited greetings interrupting conversation when diners enter and exit an izakaya, hip hop blasting through the speakers at a taqueria.
Jay Liu wouldn’t usually accept meeting for fast food for a first date, but made an exception when a guy he was chatting with proposed they meet at Jollibee, the Filipino chain. Liu, 36, had heard all the hype about it and had never been – he was curious. The chain’s signature is fried chicken and spaghetti, and he ordered both. Big mistake.
“I remember feeling like it would be good to invite him back to my place but I didn’t feel great,” said Liu, who works in business analytics at an e-commerce firm.
Bloated and tired from the fast-food feast, Liu told his date he wanted to get together again and went home alone.
Visiting a restaurant on a first date can also be unnerving for those who are self-conscious about how they look when they eat.
When Basque is dining with someone for the first time, he steers clear of messy foods such as wings.
“It’s just gross food to eat in front of somebody,” he says. “I don’t want to turn you off.”
Food preferences can reveal a lot and extinguish a spark quickly.
White gets “the ick” – a feeling of instant revulsion – when she learns a date is a picky eater, when a man tries to show off how wealthy he is by his menu choices, or when a guy suggests going for dinner at a restaurant in Toronto’s King Street West neighbourhood.
“It’s someone who’s probably pretty basic and only goes to places that are trendy in this kind of mainstream way,” she says.
Maeve Duffy, 25, has been turned off by men she’s dated when watching them put ketchup on their food – including, once, a full English breakfast.
“What are you, 8?!” says the St. John’s bartender. It’s become such a deal-breaker for her she’s mentioned it in her Hinge profile to deter those who love the condiment from engaging with her on the app.
Duffy said she prefers daytime walks or lunches to dinner dates. As a woman, she feels safer meeting when it’s light out, and the odds of her running into someone she knows – most of her social circle also work in hospitality – are greatly reduced.
Amer Diab sees a lot of first dates, as owner of the bar The Three Speed, in Toronto’s Bloorcourt neighbourhood. The space is quiet, has relatively affordable drinks and is dimly lit with candles, which cast a warm, flattering glow. Tables are close together, but each is meant to feel like a private island, says Diab.
“There’s almost this comfortable buffer of sound that you feel like you can have a private conversation,” he says.
While the first date-ness of it all can be a bit uncomfortable to watch at the start – the formal greetings, the awkward handshakes – Diab can recognize the signs that a first date is going well. One round of drinks becomes two. The pair decide to order a dish to share – maybe a charcuterie board or the black bean and cheddar dip. He’s heard from several couples who say they first met at his bar.
For a while, White’s go-to spot for first dates was Loveless, a café and bar in Toronto’s Little Portugal. The music was great, the staff were kind and – crucially – there was no table service, which meant she could leave quickly if things weren’t going well.
Once she was on a date there and could tell right away it was going to be a bust and planned to leave after the first drink. Then she spotted a man she knew, whom she had a crush on, enter the bar. She lived and worked in the neighbourhood so the risk of running into someone she knew was high.
The crush texted her after, “I hope your date was good.” She was mortified. And then she added a new entry to her first date rulebook: Find a place that’s close to home, but not too close to home.
