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!

If I didn’t have time to prepare a home cooked meal, I wouldn’t invite a date I’m trying to impress over. Seems pretty basic

I'm not sure...
As mentioned further up the thread, I ignored food incompatibility in a relationship before. He didn't want to change. I remember in the end I CRAVED fresh vegetables. Sounds brutal, but with that experience under my belt, I'm not sure I'd want to waste time finding out whether they'd want to adapt. I'm not in the business of trying to change people anyway. Rarely ends well 😂

Basically this.

Also - no one gives one about your standards apart from you.

Was the chocolate brownie from the Gobi or the Sahara?

What sort of meal did you expect?

I’ve been with my partner a few years now, and if I’d walked away because of a jar of curry sauce in the early days… my life would be a lot poorer for it.

He is a great cook, and has made some really delicious meals from complete scratch. He shops at the farm shop and the local butcher so it’s all very good quality ingredients. But great 3 course meals can take time, and in the early days when we were first going round to each other’s homes, we didn’t want to spent 3 hours in the kitchen. So, sometimes it was home cooked, but cheating a little. There isn’t anything wrong with that. You sound really high maintenance and like nothing will ever be good enough, so you should probably let him go find someone a bit more suitable.

That's...weird.

I wouldn’t be wowed by that meal, but it is a perfectly acceptable midweek dinner, especially if either of you works long hours or has kids.

If he sold it to you as a gastronomic feast, I might worry that you are on pretty different pages food-wise and you are likely to find yourself in a Zizzi on your anniversary. If it was meant to be a quick low-effort dinner then shag (or movie, or whatever) I wouldn’t be horrified by the appearance of a packet.

(I’m sure nobody makes gyoza completely from scratch at home anyway, it would be a huge amount of effort for a starter for two people. You would need to be at restaurant scale to make it worth the time involved).

Would it have been better if he bought a jar of each individual spice provided in the kit separately and stirred them together himself?

I'm astounded at the number of posters who think that meal is acceptable when he'd promised home cooked food.

Buying a ready made starter and pudding and using a kit for the curry is not home cooking.
Presumably the man wanted to impress with his food and he singularly failed. That meal is something a useless cook would produce, barely a step up from a ready meal, which is clearly incompatible with OP as she enjoys good food.

I actually don't know anyone in my friends or family who would dream of giving that meal to a guest. Home cooked means making all courses from scratch. It doesn't have to be complicated but doing what he did shows someone who really doesn't care about food or cooking.

In that respect, given people have to eat every day, his attitude to food is not compatible with that of the OP. I would certainly get rid of someone who offered me that meal while saying it was home cooked, because it would show their attitude to food would be totally alien to mine.

It's also the dishonesty, or ignorance of what constitutes good food, that would be hugely irritating. If he'd said he was a poor cook so don't expect much at least he would have been honest. It's not just about standards, it's about common interests and what you view as important. He's not a good prospect.

And there’s me pleased when my husband grills me halloumi on the BBQ 😂😂

there’s conversations you could have about this but tbh I don’t think you should inflict yourself on him.

My dh is the same. He’s the one that cooks in this house, anything from scratch and he even planned our new kitchen around his jars of spices and ingredients.

He could make you amazing fresh Indian, Italian, Chinese or Thai food … but pudding? That’ll be a cheese cake from Aldi. The man cannot bake for toffee.

😂😂

FFS he's a MAN!

I'm frankly amazed he didn't buy a curry ready meal too 😂

What? What sort of men have you dated that you think men can’t or won’t cook.
The OP is taking it too far but you really need to raise your standards.

Wow, I thought I had high standards - I’ve not cooked a single meal since getting married and so far less than half of the cleaning.

But a very normal meal cooked at home (ergo home cooked) would not has me saying a deserve better. It’s not like he got a microwave meal and dished that up for you, or ordered a take away.

You can end a relationship for whatever reason you want though, and if you want someone who also enjoys cooking then he’s not that. But it’s got absolutely nothing to do with the effort he put in or what you deserve.

Your post is laughable. I can’t believe you dumped someone over his production of a slightly pathetic meal.

If you think this is a red flag you have been very lucky in life. Please return this one to the pool however as he deserves someone else.

You’re not that keen anyway are you.

YABU. Those meal kits are great, it’s the closest you’ll get to authentic if you’re no good at cooking. I thought you were going to say he got take away & just wanted sex. I really didn’t think your complaint would be he used a meal kit and got a prepared starter & pudding so he could maximise time spent with you, instead of spending the whole evening in the kitchen.

He obviously thought about what to make for each course and made sure he had what he needed. He probably thought about what you might like and was trying to impress you.

Poor bloke honestly, he didn’t present you with fish fingers.

I can’t even remember the first meal DH made me but I remember the excitement of being at his house for the first time.

What would have impressed you?

Put the poor bloke out of his misery and finish with him.

Are you always this uptight.

How would you redeem yourself in his eyes for using an apostrophe to denote there being more than one gyoza?

Maybe he has standards for literacy and Japanese food terminology,

I agree it's not really cooking. More heating stuff up. BUT not everyone is able to cook. He may just be shit at it. Personally at this early stage I would just make a mental note that he's rubbish at cooking. You are very early days if it turns serious and living with a non-cook is a deal breaker then you can always send him on a cooking course. He may have skills in other areas.

Bloody hell you are stuck up. Were you expecting him to make gyozas (no apostrophe btw and no need to capitalise) from scratch? Curry from scratch? What he prepared was home cooked - just not from scratch which is not something many people do nowadays, especially when it comes to something a bit complicated/ time consuming.

Spare the bloke, he deserves better.