Am I being harsh to finish with my date over his ‘home cooked’ dinner?

[WeeksJa]

I’ve had a few dates with a man over the last couple of months, and he invited me over to his last night for what he promised would be a ‘home cooked’ dinner. He knows I like my food and eat healthily/well.

This is what he served up:

Starter - Gyoza’s from the supermarket
Dinner - Curry; one of those kits where you fry off the spices and add provided sauce etc
Desert - chocolate brownie (supermarket purchased)

It just felt a bit…low effort. Not what I’d describe as ‘home cooked’.

My friends are divided - a couple say to finish it, a couple say to give him the benefit of the doubt, feedback my disappointment and see if he can redeem himself.

Thoughts welcome!

@WeeksJa

i have found the responses on this thread genuinely weird and I think it must be because it’s bank holiday, the weathers a bit crap, so folk are bored and getting a tiny kick out of kicking someone on the internet.

no, you are not in any way a snob or precious or whatever other insults have been thrown at you for having the temerity to say you’re not compatible with someone who can’t cook.

it’s either the bank holiday thing, or they also eat processed food all the time and want to pretend it’s home cooked food.

Green flag to him for trying.

Red flag for you for being so instantly dismissive.

From a certain peoples perspective that is home cooked food. He may have grown up eating ready meals, boil in the bag and pre made sauce...that makes it home cooked to him.

You clearly have been fortunate to have parents who presented decent food and knew how to cook. Why do you think every supermarket is crammed with ready meals, microwave rice, pre made roast spuds and Yorkshire puds? Why in really poor areas are there so many fried chicken places.

To be honest you come across as naive and superior... he's dodged one I think

Very!!

Was it nice, would be my first question?

If so, TBh I wouldn’t care.

Definitely break up with him - poor man doesn't realise what a lucky escape he will be having!

Christ by that criteria I’m a red flag. I’m super low effort regards cooking. I make a huge effort in lots of other areas. Luckily my boyfriend really appreciates me, and I him.

maybe it’s OPs love language to be cooked for? Then that’s a different story. Maybe you just aren’t compatible? If being cooked for from scratch makes you feel loved then you need someone who does that. Nowt wrong with that.

"Feedback my disappointment and see if he can redeem himself."

Don't do this. It's a relationship, not a Trustpilot review.

I haven't RTFT, but if you truly liked him, you'd laugh it off and maybe think about signing him up for some cookery classes in the future. Which makes me think you don't really like him at all and he's just a placeholder until someone better comes along.

Women really need to get over thinking describing someone as single is some kind of insult. I am 100% sure men don’t use tgis to insult each other, in fact would more likely garner a ‘you lucky bloke’ response. Every woman I know who is single, is single through choice. Getting a man isn’t difficult after all. If you want to date someone whose top effort is heating food up, go wild, they’re all yours.

You are super high maintenance if that's a deal breaker for you. For what its worth, I am a decent cook and I'd do better than that - but i wouldn't consider that insulting in anyway at all.

I do think this is possibly why the op has received the slating she has. Because for many people, this is the top of their efforts too, and they want to believe that means home cooked.

Your attitude is misplaced in so many levels.

Well I wouldn’t have been impressed with any of that food but the company is also important.
I take food seriously, i don’t like cooking but if I do it’s done from ingredients not pre prepared.
If you don’t feel like this is something you can look past then end it and leave him free to find someone who’s happy with his efforts. You’re incompatible.

God you’re grim. My DH is a terrible cook, and if I’d dumped him over that I’d have missed out on being with genuinely, the kindest, most loving man for nearly twenty years. Leave the poor guy and let him find somebody nice.

You sound like a nightmare OP. Not just in your post but also in your replies. Please set the poor man free, you will do him a favour.

Lol. Maybe he made exactly the level of effort you derserve.

Nah he didnt, if he had he would have handed her a pot noodle at the door and told her to fuck off

I don’t think you are really concerned about compatibility or looking for a genuine long term relationship with real feelings and a desire to build a life together.

You seem to have a much more transactional approach where you will date men you don’t actually fancy or have any interest in beyond what they have to offer/the effort they are willing to expend to get the ‘reward’ of sex. This has become clear in your later posts. Hence your obsession with your worth and red flags.

In any commercial transaction there will be trade offs - he may be old, ugly and/or boring (or worse) but be rich and treat you like a princess and not make too many ‘demands’ of you. But only if he recognises your ‘worth’. Otherwise you will be used and discarded.

I can’t see any other scenario where lack of effort expended in providing a ‘home cooked’ meal would result in not ‘putting out’ and suspicion of red flags.

I wouldn’t dump someone I liked because they used some shop-bought items and did the main course from a kit. And I don’t think he deliberately misled you. He’s not Mr Cordon Bleu, but he did try, reasonably well I would have said.

I appreciate good home cooking, but I actually think meal kits are a good idea, and could entice beginners along the path to cooking from scratch.

What's wrong with being single?

There's a weird undercurrent in many of the replies implying the OP has an obligation to date someone who clears a minimal bar of acceptability, like he's doing her a great favour. That she's being unfairly picky. But she has the option of rolling the dice again, or deciding to sit the game out. Each to their own!

It depends also on how he presented it.

If it were more in the line of 'I really like gyoza - and haven't had time to build up a spice kit since moving here' that would be fine.

But if it were more: 'look what a good boy am I! I've figured out Hello Fresh all by myself!' I'd be put off 😂

I tried a ready-prepped kit after getting vouchers through work and have to say it wasn't great - it tasted slightly weird and the meat wasn't top-quality.

Can’t be that much of a reward, you’re single.

Do you have his number? I want to congratulate him on the bullet he just dodged.

Oh come on - reheated a prepared starter, used packet mix curry spices and sauce, bought dessert.

That's "assembled" at best and reheating at worst. I'd expect it from a student newly away from home. For an actual adult it's not "home cooked" in any meaningful sense. It's the easiest option. He can get away with.

Hell...been married forty years and DH still couldn't cook a curry from scratch.
He's in the garden doing a bit of fencing...I'll go and dump him now

If that happened to me, and there weren't other big red flags, I'd probably gently tease him about his "home cooked meal" and see how he reacted. Maybe there are some circumstances he didn't tell you and it would be interesting to see if he's honest about them or if he reacts negatively to your saying something. Or maybe he didn't think of "home cooked" as anything special, just convenient to eat at his and this was cheaper than takeaway.

Do you know how he normally cooks or eats? It's possible that this is actually "nice" versus what he usually "cooks at home", but even so it could be a deal breaker for you that he's described this as home cooked, especially if he implied in any way that this was a treat, he was going to special effort, etc. If he normally cooks from scratch and gave you this instead then yeah, you might think he's not that interested unless there's some special reason. Either way, you can certainly end it for this or any other (or no) reason, but you don't HAVE to. Only you can decide if this is a dealbreaker and why (different standards, he's stupid/dishonest, lazy effort when he should be trying to impress you, etc.)