Deciding where to go for dinner sounds like it should be a very straightforward and simple decision to make, yet it is one of those things which can take an awfully long time to decide on. You will help yourself enormously if you start by narrowing down the types of places you have to choose from, rather than trying to just pick one restaurant out of an infinite list. By narrowing the selection you can allow your brain to focus just on the relevant places you know about as you make your decision, rather than calling into question every restaurant you have ever seen or heard of.
Even if you don’t know exactly what type of food you would like to eat, you can start by eliminating the ones you don’t want. For example, if you know that you are not in the mood for a spicy curry, you can get rid of all of the curry houses and Indian restaurants from the list of places under consideration. If you don’t want fast food, then equally you can get rid of all fast food establishments from the list.
You will need to think about how far you are willing to travel to go out for dinner. If you really don’t have that much time then you might want to pick somewhere local so that you have more time to enjoy the restaurant. If you travel farther away, you might be rushing to finish your meal to get back in time for whatever you have planned for the rest of your evening. If you have the luxury of some free time to linger at dinner then you might be willing to travel a little bit farther afield. If so, you will need to think about how you want to get there. If you are using the subway then you won’t want to walk too far at the other end so should consider restaurants close to subway stations when you make your decision.
If you are looking to eat out in a group then you should look at what will be convenient for all of you. Whilst it is often difficult to cater to everybody’s personal taste, you can make sure that wherever you choose will cater for any food allergies or intolerances which members of the party may have. You can also look at a geographical area that is convenient for all of the people coming to dinner. It would be unfair to make some people travel for ages if others only had to walk around the corner. Try and look for a restaurant in the middle of everyone’s houses and you will drastically narrow down the number of restaurants you have to choose from.
When you make your decision about where to have dinner, the choice will become much easier the more you narrow down the selection of places you have to choose from. It doesn’t really matter how you eliminate restaurants from the list, but it is much easier to choose a restaurant from a list of 4 or 5 than it is to pick one when choosing from the whole city.