Here, have some bread and cheese to eat next to your bread, tomato and cheese.
OK, the takeaway places have been doing this forever, and they must do it because people will buy and eat it, not that I understand why. But OH and I were recently at a familiar high-street chain Italian restaurant probably best known for pizza and pasta, and three out of seven side options were forms of garlic bread - and the rest were variations on fries! No salad, no roasted veg, not even slaw. If this were not poor enough, eight (8!) starters were bread-based too, another was merely olives (which I love but they're a nibble, not a starter) and the bread-and-cheese-free one I wanted and had been looking forward to all afternoon was sold out. Perhaps no wonder.
I moaned at them about all this, and their lame excuse was that it's a reduced menu post-lockdown. Fine, but other restaurants are offering reduced menus too - still with variety. I'm not an Olympic swimmer and don't need to carb-load like one so ... reduce the feckin' stodge?