All of us have been there. You order hungry, even greedy, and then the dishes start to arrive. The dishes keep coming.
You feel a sinking sensation as you shuffle plates in order to fit another side dish on the already groaning dining table. You have literally eaten more than you can eat.
There’s always tomorrow for lunch. Just ask for a few flimsy containers to take away, and you can pack everything up. Relief.
What happens if the person says no?
On the one hand, there’s an argument about food safety. No restaurant wants to be accused by a guest of food poisoning simply because they left their doggy bags in their cars for a few minutes.
A room-temperature container of leftovers can be the perfect breeding ground for bacteria.
Restaurants may choose not to provide containers. However, the NSW Food Act of 2004 does not prohibit them from giving doggy bags.
To minimize the risk that food can be contaminated, it is the consumer’s responsibility to safely store and handle the food they take home from a restaurant.
Unfortunately, many restaurants will not allow you to take your leftovers home. Few restaurants will package your leftovers.
Crown Sydney explained to us that, due to OHS concerns, they don’t allow you to take any food that hasn’t been eaten home. You can, however, order off the menu for takeaway.
Do restaurants allow customers to take their leftovers home with them?
In the early days after the Great Reemerging, it was obvious that food leftovers had no place in the kitchen. We happily gathered our scraps and ate them at the table.
It seems that the days of discreetly speaking to your waiter and having him return with a bag of food for your misjudged appetite are long gone.
Does it make sense to waste perfectly good food when going out to eat is already a luxury, and even more so with the “cozzie-livs crisis”? Why do we feel shame when a little pile of empty containers is placed on our table?
When you don’t care about food waste, there’s an air of elitism. For the well-off, leaving half a pate plate behind is nothing. But for most of us, this is a luxury we cannot afford to waste.
It’s probably time to stop worrying about having less money, less appetite, or less status and start focusing on wasting more.
Food waste is a real issue. More than 20 percent of Australian produce ends up in the trash before it reaches our supermarkets. 3.3 million Australians live below the poverty level.
Some people are doing some very clever things to fight waste. But we can all do our part by putting our pride aside and re-normalizing the doggy bag. There’s your lunch.
