“Americans are just beginning to regard food the way the French always have. Dinner is not what you do in the evening before something else. Dinner is the evening.”
- Art Buchwald

For much of the world, the dinner experience is just that, an experience.

A priority.

A time for family and friends.

A time for laughter and celebration.

A time to listen and a time to talk.

And, a time for delicious, healthy food; a fresh tomato off the vine, homemade bread, locally sourced meat and cheese. Dinner becomes a feast for the eyes that satisfies our soul.

Unfortunately, as Americians, we stuff our schedules to the brim with work, sports, committees, and millions of other activities, leaving little time for making dinner and even less for eating it. If we corral our family around a table they usually break free and back into the scrum of the world in less time than your average sitcom. The dinner experience is anything but.

And that may be the “quality” dinner experience in America. It is a better experience then heating up a frozen pizza, serving cereal for dinner, or sitting in the drive-through at the local fast-food establishment that you all eat in the car on the way back home.

A dinner experience while eating out

Americans may struggle with slowing down for dinner, but one significant exception for Americans is dining out. Anthony Epter’s doctoral disertation at the University of Vermont discovered, “the importance of restaurants in modern society beyond the nourishment that a meal can provide.”

Benefits include eating diverse foods, conneting with others, and minimizing the time involved in cooking and cleaning up at home.

But not all dining experiences are created equal. According to Center for Disease control data, More than one-third of Americans choose a fast-food meal on any given day, a far contrast from a dining experience that is relaxing, healthy and engaging with others.

But 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic has brought seizmic disruption to the American restaurant industry.

“Restaurants have lost nearly three times more jobs than any other industry since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic,” stated an article in Law.com. With profit margins below 10 percent and most restaurants greatly restricted with occupancy because of the coronavirus, industry experts are predicting widespread closures.

The end result is more people–whether forced to because of covid-19 related changes or making different choices now in the new reality–are eating at home.

The challenge remains, can the frenzied pace of American life change to create a more meanginful American dining experience?

Healthy, quick but still an experience of dinner

Blogger Julie Brown, a contributing writer at Bene.News is no stranger to the challenges of creating an experience of dinner.

“I’ve run out of ideas of what to make that the kids will eat, and even if I have a recipe in mind, I don’t have time to go to the grocery store every night anyway.” Julie states. “I write about wellbeing and try to practice it, but like everyone, the challenge is real.”

For Julie, a nightly planned dinner for her family of four was too much. She settled on something less ambitious.

“Sunday dinners are my favorite,” she says. “We all sit down to a beautiful meal, which takes hours to cook, but it’s always worth it. During the week though, I struggle to find healthy quick dinners.”

Changes are coming. As chef Art Buchwald suggests, perhaps Americans are finally beginning to learn from European and Latin traditions that dinner is more than a meal.