I have been thinking on how to celebrate my birthday, I thought of inviting my parents to my favorite restaurant. When I brought it up, they were all upset “why don’t you invite us to your home? Why don’t you cook for us? Restaurant is all reheated food, home cooked fresh food is much better” etc. We have lived in Europe for almost my whole life, I don’t really understand what’s wrong with going out to eat or why they expect me to invite them to my house and prepare a festive meal on my birthday.

  • Yaky@slrpnk.net
    15·
    21 hours ago

    Are they (post-)soviet boomers? There are some cultural things that I noticed too, some amusing, some frustrating.

    • Home food is automatically better than restaurant food, as you said. Also, somehow, any burger is automatically viewed as McDonalds burger (i.e. bad)
    • Undercooked food is unacceptable, triggering Americans who love their steak rare.
    • Unsolicited advice and unprompted attempts to help.
    • Insistence on getting you a gift or accepting a never-requested gift. “Here’s a nice thing, it was expensive and difficult to get, you should like it”.
    • Viewing self as “a burden”. Being offered food, comfort, or accomodation is rejected because “I don’t want to impose”. Sometimes goes into “suffering builds character” mindset, which is nonsense.
    • ieatmeat@lemmy.worldOP
      41·
      21 hours ago

      Yep that pretty much hits home.

      Were Soviet era restaurants so bad that they all prefer home cooked? Or were they unaffordable for the average citizen back then? Or was it just a social norm to cook food for your guests?

      • Yaky@slrpnk.net
        7·
        20 hours ago

        AFAICT restaurants were few, expensive, and difficult to get into (i.e. not for regular people on regular basis), and the option for regular people would be stolovaya (cafeteria?) which is simple, probably mediocre food.

        So seems like if you don’t have the connections and want decent food, make it yourself.