Should You Compliment a Bad Meal?

Mac and Cheese

We have all been there—invited to a friend’s or family member’s house for a meal or cookout, silently praying on the ride that they won’t serve the casserole that tasted like dog food the last time you ate it. Or the cake that was as dry as cardboard, with icing that left you feeling nauseated for hours afterward. You’ve even taken the extra steps of bringing your own side dishes and meat, and have offered to handle the cooking, all in hopes of not revealing that the hosts’ best qualities do not include preparing food (for anyone other than the family pet).

The question is, why not just be honest? Should you compliment a bad meal? Manners and etiquette lessons remind us that when we leave someone else’s home after a meal, we should immediately praise the cooks and let them know just how much we enjoyed the pasta salad and ribs or shrimp. After all, that’s nice, and that’s what decent people do, right? There really is no reason to take a bite of food at the table and quickly spit it back onto your plate while wincing in disgust. That sort of behavior is saved for five-year-olds and scolded with leg slaps under the table. But doesn’t lying about the meal only set you up for more bad meals to come? If you raved about the tuna casserole to the cook while secretly hoping you could find a bush in the backyard to vomit in, don’t you just increase your chances of the host serving it for you again?

According to the infamous Miss Manners, it is considered rude to say negative things about a meal that has been prepared for you, especially if the person who prepared it is merely a friend or acquaintance. The rules change, however, when a cook is preparing a new or “trial meal” and asks for your honest opinion. If the cook has made a new dish and is considering bringing it to the next covered dish night at church, and you honestly don’t like it, the polite thing to do is say something like, “This is not something that suits my personal taste.” This way, you don’t insult the cook; it’s a more direct critique of the recipe rather than the person who prepared it. Plus, it’s normal and expected that everyone has different taste buds. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean someone else won’t. Even more helpful is if you can offer constructive advice to improve the dish, such as, “Perhaps it needs to be cooked longer,” or “A little more salt would make this tastier.” This indicates that you didn’t quite like the meal without being downright rude.

If the cook is a close family member, and you’re comfortable being honest with them, you should let them know that you didn’t like the meal—especially if you plan to share more meals together in the future. Likewise, if you’re hosting a dinner party and one of your guests mentions that they didn’t quite like the food you served, it’s important to appreciate their honesty rather than take it personally. When it comes to food, individual tastes and preferences vary widely, and it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to share the same palate. Just because someone doesn’t like what you cooked (or you didn’t like what someone else cooked) doesn’t mean the dish was inherently awful.

Honesty, in some form, is definitely the best policy. One of the worst things you can do is outright lie to a friend or family member and tell them the food was delicious when it clearly wasn’t. If you do, you can expect to leave future outings either hungry or in need of Pepto-Bismol. Plus, if these are people you care about, you certainly don’t want them serving their homemade cat food casserole to others, right? Maybe it’s best not to tell them immediately or in front of the whole dinner party. Waiting a day or two before letting them know that the new recipe or the steak was undercooked might be a better approach.

On the flip side, if you are eating at a new friend’s home, or at an acquaintance’s house, or going through a buffet-style covered dish event at a local school, church, or work function, your culinary opinions should generally be kept to yourself. After all, being known as the food critic and turning up your nose at the fruits of other people’s efforts would only make you look rude and ungrateful. The chances of you having to eat that food again (or even at all) are slim to none. Just pass it by, throw your paper plate in the trash, and move on.

Being rude or hurtful, or spewing insults in any form, is never the best decision. Likewise, outright lying to a cook is not in your long-term best interests either. Essentially, the best approach is to handle these bad meals with a bit of humor, some honesty, and compassion for the person who cooked!

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One Response

  1. This forum really helped me out,
    my fathers best friend asked us out for a family dinner at their house,
    so after we finished the meal and got home, my father asked me if the meal was good and i outright said casually without considering the after consequences `It was the worse of the kind i had`.
    After a day my father forwarded my casualness to his friend and laughed at me because the uncle (fathers best friend) said that he will take me out for a dinner.
    I had no idea what would i say if he asked me about the last dinner…

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