Culinary Poll #014: Take-Away Food

[Daniel Rogov]

The take-away food industry, along with those places that deliver to one's home has expanded by no less than 14,000% (fourteen thousand percent) since 1980. That's big business. How often do you dine on take-away food or dishes that are delivered to your home.

In your comments, if you do dine on such food, do you have any favorite types (e.g. Chinese, pizza, burgers, Japanese, Thai, or even French gourmet)?

[Robert Reynolds]

Average about once a week, generally pizza, but sometimes Chinese.

[Shel T]

It's either Thai from a really terrif hole in the wall joint or our fave pizza place, and once in a blue moon, will get Indian delivered.

[Matilda L]

Take away from good Thai, Indian and Chinese restaurants hereabouts are a handy way to cater for large gatherings of family and friends. Perhaps four or five times a year? From time to time, we get a pre-cooked chicken for dinner - did that last night, in fact; too exhausted from a long busy day to cook, or to go out - perhaps once in two or three months.

Matilda

[Michelle Nordell]

We rarely do take-away. There are not any decent Chinese or Indian take-away here. That is the one thing I miss.

[Stuart Yaniger]

I'm visiting California at the moment for a wedding and a tech conference. For the conference dinner, we did take out from Slanted Door. That did not suck.

[Carl Eppig]

We voted for once a month. It is usually pizza or Chinese. It is always take out, as nobody delivers to where we live.

[Dave R]

In the last three years we have had pizza delivered once and had Chinese take-out twice. I'm not sure which one was the worst.

[Daniel Rogov]

My vote went to "very, very rarely" and that largely because my experience in earlier days were so negative. I suppose I simply had enough of soggy pizzas, Chinese food that arrived half-cold and then dried out when being reheated, and sushi that in the half-hour or so from the restaurat to my home managed to look rather uniformly grey and unappealing.

Today it happens only in times of absolute desperation (e.g. on returning from the airport after a nine hour flight and feeling hunger pangs so terrible that they convince me I am on the verge of starvation; after returning quite late at night from an all day wine tasting session, the stomach begging alternately in French, English and Hebrew for some junk with which to fill itself, or, of course, when my daughter visits because she adores take-away pizza.

Best
Rogov

[James Roscoe]

In suburban America this is a frequent phenomenon, especially if you live near large urban centers in the northeast or California. We do it about once every two weeks or so. Pizza and Chinese are old stand-byes, but let's not forget Mexican, sushi, Thai, B-bq, and soul food! Mmmmm! And I only hit the tip of the iceberg.

[Robin Garr]

Quite rare for us, the sole exception being a very good local pizzeria that can be counted on to produce a quality pie on short notice on those nights when we're not going out and I just plain don't want to cook.

My answer would change to "two or three times a month," however, if I included the "doggie bags" that we very often take away after restaurant reviews. I gather that this practice is considered de trop in much of Europe, but in the US it's both appropriate as a way to avoid the choice between gluttony and wasting food.

[Scott Lancer]

A couple times a week for lunch, and occasionally at any hour they're open when I drive by Country Sweet Chicken and Ribs.

For lunch generally a sandwich or similar, and occasionally a gumbo or chicken enchillada soup form the place across the street from my desk.