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.
I have many russian (+ukrainian/kazakhstan etc.) friends and in fact they have a somewhat different attitude to food and restaurants as compared to europeans.
From my point of view they enjoy preparing food together, everyone brings something with them (salad, pickles, vodka… all of course self made), whereas in european countries I feel its more expected that the host provides the food already on the table or you go to a restaurant.