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.
There’s a common old world view that going to a restaurant is either for rich people with too much money or for stupid people that don’t know how to cook. So it’s more a class based frugality thing that then also is a comfort thing because doing something outside the norm would be to be in public and not be in a private space where everyone can be themselves and follow the usual family dynamics. Restaurants are also commonly a special occasion thing too but seems your folks don’t have the memo on that one. Devils advocate, they probably want you to save your money and want more quality time with you and give you the “opportunity” to host them as they have done for you and others in the past and probably they enjoyed doing so?