Does Anyone at a Restaurant Actually Notice If You Don't Eat Everything on Your Plate?

Maybe you like to clean your plate. Maybe you always leave a bite behind. Here's who's watching.

We all have habits when it comes to finishing the food that we have been served. Much of the behavior probably comes from our childhoods. Some of us were taught to clean our plates, not wasting a single crumb, for there are less fortunate children starving in far away countries. Others were ingrained to always leave a little bit of food on the plate so as not to seem “piggy” or to signal to the person who cooked it that you had more than enough to eat. I tend to usually leave a bite of food on my plate because that’s what I saw my father do. I also remember not being allowed dessert until I had completely cleaned my plate, so — mixed messages aplenty. Everyone looks at their last bite of food differently, but in a restaurant you’re not the only one looking at your plate at the end of the meal. It’s not that anyone is judging you like you’re Christina Crawford sitting in front of a day-old piece of rare steak. The staff only cares about how it will affect them.

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A server sees a half-eaten entree and has to consider the possibility that the food wasn’t good. Or maybe the customer is simply full and they’ll want it boxed up, which means they did like it. But if they don’t want it boxed up, that must mean they didn’t like it and they’re going to complain. Or maybe they did like it, but just don’t want to carry it home. A busser sees a cleaned plate and knows instantly how easy it will be to stack other dirty dishes on top of it. A chef or cook might see an empty plate and feel a sense of satisfaction, but a plate with food still on it that doesn’t get boxed up can send them into a dizzying spiral of questioning their self-worth. These are all just momentary thoughts that flash through the prefrontal cortex of their brains to help them make a decision on how to proceed. After that, they never think about it again, so maybe we don’t need to think of it ourselves so much.

As a young, naive waiter in the 1900s, I used to tell customers who had cleaned their plate, “Wow, I don’t even need to send this one to the dishwasher.” I thought I was being funny, but it’s mortifying now to think how many people had to hear that. Did they think I was truly impressed or did they know I was just trying to be likable to increase my tip? Worse, I hope none of them were embarrassed by my calling it to attention.

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When I go out to eat and don’t like something, I use the tried and true method I developed in fourth grade of moving food around on the plate to make it look like I ate more than I did. Everyone knows that adding distance between three brussels sprouts makes it look like there were just too darned many to eat. Truthfully, I’m a fully grown man who doesn’t want his server to know I struggle to finish my vegetables. I know my waiter doesn’t care, so why do I? It’s all performative and if there are still people who overthink how much food to leave on their plate or feel overly full for eating everything, just eat what you want. Take leftovers if you like it, throw it away if you don’t, and eat it all if you love it. The only other people who care about the status of your plate are only thinking about it because it affects their job. Other than that, they don’t care, so neither should you.

And I’d like to apologize to any of those customers at the Black-Eyed Pea restaurant in Houston, Texas that I commended for so thoroughly cleaning their plates. Rest assured, those plates did in fact go to the dishwasher.

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