A question about European late dinners

I would say here in Normandy most people eat around 7-7.30 at home and 8pm in restaurants. Lunch is still a much bigger meal and when we lived in a rural village it was the main meal at lunchtime and soup in the evening. Everyone thinks we eat very early at 6.30. When I was teaching in French schools everyone stopped for a three course lunch at 12. The menus were excellent. The staff couldn't believe that in England it was 10 minutes for a sandwich.
In Spain our family eat at lunchtime, but that is about 2.30. My granchildren come home from school having only had a small snack mid-morning. They eat a smaller meal around 9pm. When we were travelling around Spain we found we could eat around 5pm at the end of lunch service. We could never stay awake for dinner at 9pm after a day on the road!

We usually eat between 5.30 - 6pm. I have a friend with an Italian partner and they eat about 7pm onwards. There are always several courses and long gaps in between.

The food is fantastic, but we always have indigestion the following day!

It dates back to before dh retired, when he was never home until at least 7, so dinner’s at around 7.30 here. Exceptions if small Gdcs are staying and will eat the same, when it’ll be more like 6.

Any Sunday roast will always be in the evening. Same when we were children past the very little stage - my mother reasoned that a lunchtime roast took up too much of the day. Not to mention just wanting to zizz after a big meal, which I still do if we ever have a big lunch out.

No set meal times here really but if I’m eating at home I don’t tend to eat much after 7pm. If I’ve been out for a big lunch I just have some supper when I feel hungry. If the GC are staying over we eat a little earlier.

When I was a child we always had a big Sunday lunch. Eventually my mother got very daring and changed it to an evening meal so that she didn't spend the entire day cooking an d clearing up. When we went to visit my grandmother, who was in her eighties, she wanted to know how my mother had time to come too. We explained about eating in the evening and her comment was "Well you keep a funny house!" That has been a family saying for about 60 years now!

We tend to eat between 7 and 8, we were surprised when we first went to North America how early they eat around 6ish. Whilst I love that al fresco eating that often goes with the culture and climate of southern Europe, personally I don't like eating too late these days, it's more a digestion thing than anything else.

30 or so years ago I had a lovely Spanish neighbour married to an English husband, she told me that she thought England was one of the prettiest places to be in the summer months, but found the fact that w as a nation retreated behind our doors come winter time hard to cope with. I do remember one very hot summer evening we'd gone to bed it was about 11 pm, our neighbours returned home with a party of people and laid their outdoor table for dinner, we heard the clatter of knives and chinking of glasses and quiet conversation well into the early hours. That's a late night supper for you continental style We had to have our windows open it was so hot that night, otherwise we might not have heard them, not that we were that bothered.

If we are home it is usually about 6.30 but if we go out it is usually around 8 pm. I remember a trip to a Barcelona hotel where they served breakfast from 7.30- 3.30 pm. Wonderful.

CanadianGran France is much as the UK families eat when the day is done - between 6.00 - 8.00pm. Restaurants are open from 6.30 onwards.

We are in France at the moment and booked to have dinner in the best restaurant in the area this evening. We are booked for 7.00 - 7.30pm and the restaurant will be full by 8.30pm

I have not been to Italy to eat out, but, yes, the Spanish do eat late, but the rest of northern Europe; Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavia have similar eating patterns.

With Spain, and possibly Italy, their late eating times are connected to their working day. They work, or used to work a day of 2 halves, with a long break midday, 8.00am - 12.00pm then 3.00pm to 7.00pm, which makes the late evening meal, as everywhere else, shortly after the working day ends

Dinner on the table at 6.30 here - anyone here then can join in if they want, anyone out has to fend for themselves.

Sounds horrid, but I got fed up with spending my evenings cooking for people coming in and going out at different times - four different meals some nights and a full time job - and decided I wasn't playing any more!

My apologies for generalizing about Europeans. In my mind I was thinking of mostly Western Europe; France, Italy, Spain for example.

I understand it many hot countries people eat late because they don't want to cook in the heat of the day, I just wonder about the evening routine. I think if I sat for a glass of wine after work, and didn't have to start cooking until 4 hours later, dinner would never materialize!

I get home from work at 4:30, exercise or walk dog, tidy house and visit DH while getting dinner ready, which is usually 6:00. Tidy up and get ready to relax by 7 or 7:30

In France,you are unlikely to find a restaurant willing to serve any customer who come in after 8.30pm. I am talking about independent restaurants not chain restaurants in big towns.

Although, where we are, it is difficult to visit a restaurant in the evening without a reservation and quite a number only do evening meals from Thursday onwards

We eat our evening meal at about 6.00pm. If dining out, we usually aim for 7.30/8.00pm. On holiday (usually somewhere in Europe) we eat out at 8.00pm. We were surprised when we went to Florida, to find that the restaurants local to where we were staying all closed at about 9.00pm! That seemed so early to us.

Europe is a very lare geographic area containing, I haven't counted precisely, but it must contain 30 or 40 different countries with widely different cultures.

I think there is also a difference between what time people eat at home and what time they eat when out. I think most people eating at home, eat when the day's work is done and the family are gathered. When eating out, in many countries, you eat later.

We are in north France at the moment, where home eating seems to be much as in the UK, but if eating out it is more common to eat between 7.30 - 8.30.

The one exception I know of, is Spain, where they eat very late. When we visited Spain, we could not find any restaurant who started serving dinner until 9.00pm.

At home in Manchester we tend to eat around 7pm. Over here in Spain I’ve seen big families who live here ordering their evening meals out at 10pm. A family across the road from us are just setting the table at that time - in the summer when it’s very hot I might be locking up for the night at 11pm and in the quiet and heat I see and hear them putting the plates on the table in their garden!

I think the weather and cultural norms dictate how and when 'Europe' eats dinner.

And we do the same here in the UK - with considerable variations. The farming community will eat differently to the high-powered City worker, etc.

Late dinners for some would mean sleepless nights - for others it could be a relaxing social event at the end of a busy day.

We're all so different in our routines and lifestyles that we probably encompass a bit of the 'European tradition', and our own traditions.

Me - as I don't have to work to the clock any longer - I just eat when I'm hungry... even if that's 10 o' clock at night. The trick for late eating is not to each too much and make it an easily digestible meal.

When at home we eat 7.30 - 8pm, on holiday it’s normally 9ish.

My DS lives in Southern Spain. One Christmas we were staying with them. The tradition there is to have the Christmas meal on Christmas Eve. My dDIL’s family arrived at 11 pm. The meal consisted of Spanish tapas, turkey, Christmas pudding and then a Spanish dessert. Multicultural. Finished past 1am Christmas Day. Indigestion and no sleep followed.

I eat around 6pm but my son and family who live on the Mediterranean do eat later, their evenings are warm and sitting outside eating meeting up with friends/family is normal for them.

It's changed a lot for us. When we both worked we had packed lunches and our main meal in the evening about 6pm as the children were hungry and raiding the biscuits or toast when they got in from school (despite a cooked school lunch for DS).

DH prefers now to eat at noon and then have a light tea about 5pm so I go along with that - or not if I don't feel like a proper meal. These days I seem to have more snack type foods with salads, fruit, sandwiches, soup etc. featuring in my diet. His appetite is greater than mine but he does a lot of cycling so needs the fuel. Today I am making sausage and mash with onion gravy for him but I might just have a sausage sandwich or something like an omelette. Depends how I feel. He will finish off the cakes from yesterday's afternoon tea for his dessert!

henetha

I used to eat dinner about 7pm but have gradually brought it back so I now eat by 6 pm. Mainly for digestive reasons; less heartburn at bedtime.

Similar thing here - used to be about eight but now mostly about 6.30 as we get older. It's not a fixed time though...

When I was a child my father, who was a manual labourer, got in about 4.15 and we ate at 4.30.

Absolutely Kitty

The timing of an evening meal can depend on so many things- when you (all) get in, if anybody is going out, anything special on TV or indeed the length of time needed for cooking.
As a child we always used to eat on the dot of 6.30 as my father used to go back to his office for peace to get on with his writing. As a newly married before the children I can remember pottering in the kitchen while listening to a the Archers, so presumably we ate round about then.
Is it a “cut and dried” European or indeed British thing?
I doubt it.

We eat when it's ready!!

Personally, I hate eating late. We have our main meal 4.30-5.00, a throwback to my own school days when tea was on the table soon after we arrived home. When our own children were young, DH came home for hot meal at that time then returned to work on the farm till dusk.

I like to have eaten, washed up, showered and sitting down to watch the 6 o’ clock news.

Dislike going out for meals that start at 7-8pm, which is why we very rarely do it.

Just 'Europe' always seems such a sweeping generalisation. There are so many variables involved (geography, weather, age, class etc) as well as 28 different countries with different cultures.
I once saw a post on a travel forum asking which was the best sort of shoes to wear in Europe!

It was always 8pm in our house when the children were small as DH didn't get home from work until 7.45. The children had a meal at 5pm and were in bed by 6.30, they were always awake at 6.30am regardless of the time they went to bed and we had to leave for school at 7.45.
Now it depends, if I'm working I probably won't eat in the evening as I don't get home until 7.30-8 and that's too late for me. Otherwise we eat at 7.