Casey Detrow

Dining Out With Casey

Dining Out 101: An Introduction

By: Casey Detrow

Posted: 5/14/08

For a New Yorker, dining out is more than an occasional option. It becomes an inevitable lifestyle, and rightly so. In a city with more than 20,000 restaurants, many tucked away in hundreds of ethnic neighborhoods, exploring the culinary world is absolutely essential.

But New York isn't cheap, especially not Manhattan, and particularly not the Hunter College neighborhood, the Upper East Side. So you're probably wondering, "How am I supposed to live on this student budget and afford something more than the fried chicken wings and fountain soda of the third-floor café?" Believe it or not, it's possible.

Dining out as a student is all a matter of the correct scheduling, the right amount of research, and figuring out a food budget that allows for some flexibility. Dining out doesn't necessarily mean multi-course, prix fixe meals in posh restaurants with bottles of Cristal bubbling endlessly at your table. It simply means eating: enjoying what you're eating, affording what you're eating, and offering your palate a little more excitement than ooey-gooey pizza.

Issue number one is scheduling. Time your restaurant visits to take advantage of discounted lunch or early-bird dinner menus. By eating out at a popular restaurant in the afternoon, oftentimes before 3 or 4 p.m., you'll save yourself a few bucks, which can quickly add up. Restaurant lunch menus tend to include a salad, dessert, or some other extra dish in the already-reduced price, giving you the ultimate bang for your buck. If lunch is out of the question due to conflicting class schedules, some restaurants offer special Monday-thru-Thursday night dinner menus, which also are discounted. Bottom line: avoid splurging on some supposedly romantic weekend dinner. I can't think of anything less enjoyable than an unaffordable meal.

Second issue: dining out requires you to do your homework. Groan-yes, homework. But unlike the mundane, busy-work assignments given by some professors, restaurant research pays off in the end. By checking out restaurant reviews or neighborhood profiles online before venturing out in search of food, you'll save yourself both time and the inescapable ensuing frustration we all know that's caused by too much walking around and not enough options for good eating. Yes, New York is full of restaurants, but that doesn't mean they're all good. Make sure you know what you're looking for ahead of time, otherwise you might find yourself stuck in a dull, bland restaurant wishing you'd done your homework in advance.

Lastly, make sure your budget allows for some wiggle room-that is, be flexible about your expenditures. Don't box yourself into thinking that all decent meals will be $4.99 or less. This may be the case when dining on campus, but once you veer away from 68 St. and Lexington, even fried chicken wings will be more expensive, assuming you're willing to pay for better quality. You should always consider a little eco-culinary concept that I adhere to: the issue of price versus quality, also known as value. A dish may be cheap, but chances are it's also going to taste as cheap as the 99 cents you paid for it. A word I like to associate with dining out on a budget is frugality. Be frugal, not cheap, in your restaurant choices. If necessary, spend $3 to $5 more and enjoy yourself, compensating for this extravagance by spending less the next time you eat out.

Overwhelming as it may sound, dining out is simple. The hard part is breaking out of the comfort zone of bland dorm food and beginning to explore the exciting world of restaurants. I'd like to help guide you through this in my column, beginning next semester, which will let you know of new restaurants that lend themselves to a student budget. Bon appétit!