Taking Sides: Starter & Main Course v. Main Course & Dessert

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You're going out for dinner, but don't want to be too tubby full afterwards. So do you have just a starter and main course, or just a main course and dessert?

― DV, Thursday, 6 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

starter & main course leaves open the option of "Fuck it, I'll have dessert anyway... oh no my little tummy is all hurty".

― DV, Thursday, 6 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Depends if the starter is a bowl of salad / soup or if the starter is a plate of deep-fried cocktail weenies. If you go w/ the salad, you might have enough space after the entree to squeeze in dessert! (If you conveniently skip lunch / breakfast, you're guaranteed to have the space.)

I usually opt for the salad and a portion of my entree. Trying to be a "good boy" and ravish my plate leaves me with a rock sold temp. gut. Ooofa.

― Daver, Thursday, 6 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

How does the Italian custom of having the salad after the main course figure into all this?

― Michael Daddino, Thursday, 6 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Is that where my dad picked it up from? He said he learned to do that when he was on a dinner date with someone at her family's house, they must have been Italian in background...

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 6 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah some of my friends do the salad after too and it's all I can do to not think they're like "keep up with the Euro" wannabe- continentals. They say the roughage aids digestion. I say it's a poor subsitute for ICE CREAM.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 6 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes, unless someone is offering me ice cream for a starter, I'm taking the dessert option. Though I've rarely felt so full that I couldn't eat some ice cream anyway - it hardly fills you up lots. And I've never worried about calories or anything like that.

― Martin Skidmore, Thursday, 6 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I have them all .

― anthony, Thursday, 6 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

No starter for me! Afters is the best part of dinner!

― jel --, Thursday, 6 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Im hungry when i get there - so i want starter - I dont want the meal to end - so i want dessert. This is the battlefield of sweet vs savory. The soldiers of sugar and salt.Im a savory citizen. How about you?

― ducklingmonster, Thursday, 6 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Appetizer (starter) and dessert is not an option?

― j.lu, Thursday, 6 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I eat ALL THREE. what's a little stomachache once in awhile?

― Maria, Thursday, 6 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

STARTER DOOOD! DESSERTS ARE 4 PUSSIES!!! r0x0r!!!

― Ron, Thursday, 6 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Being one giant sweet-tooth, I say go for dinner and dessert. What you don't finish tastes just as good the next day.

― Nichole Graham, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

starter over dessert any day. A nummy plate of savoury and nutritious food over some fluffy gewgaw confection of sugar? there's really no contest. Take an indian frinstance. For starter you could have any number of meat or vegetable tandoori goodies, small meals in themselves, or ice cream for pud. Bleurgh.

― misterjones, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If you don't have starter and all your mates do then you have to sit there for at least an extra 20 minutes salivating and attempting to pinch bits of food off their plates. And if they are then too full for pudding but you aren't then they might get all tetchy about sitting waiting for you to demolish your pud (plus they will probably pinch bits of it out of boredom). I think it is a matter of social politics rather than hunger / sweet toothedness.

― Emma, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Starters, especially if the meal involves reasonable amounts of booze. I haven't got a very sweet tooth in the first place and the addition of wine to proceedings puts me right off anything sweet and sticky. However, cheese post-main course is entirely different box of badgers.

― RickyT, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, but the cheese option in English restaurants is all too often shitty and involves a weensy plate with 3 stamp-sized smidgens of cheese straight from the fridge. Not like nummy French cheese courses.

― Emma, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You feckers. Yesterday due to your talking about food I had stupidly large cravings for a chicken kiev but on return home just ate toast and some raw carrots... UNTIL! Tom bought me home a chicken kiev hooray thank you Tom. Mmmm chicken kiev MICROCHIPS and beans. Due to never-eating mother never cooking anything (I am sure she must have but I cannot remember anything apart from her rice pudding because she put lots of nutmeg on the top) and my stepmother being queen of Iceland (ye store not ye country) that = to me the pure taste of home cooking. Mmmm lovely.

And NOW, talking about STARTERS I remember that I had the nicest PRAWN POORI ever ever ever for starters last week and NOW I WANT THAT. I might have to spend money tonight on TAKEAWAY CURRY.

― Sarah, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You are right Emma, but even cold midget sized blocks of under ripe Brie >> big slab of chocolate gateux and cream.

― RickyT, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

you crazy no-dessert (er 'pudding') ppl are mentalists. starters (and main courses) are way overrated

― geeta, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You'd be mad going for main course pudding in Indian or Chinese or Japanese restaurants.

― Pete, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Pudding in Chinese restaurants is admittedly shit (i.e. toffee apples & bananas, I am not a fan of cooked fruit) but Indian restaurants! What about a nice kulfi! What about the PINGU KULFI as promised by the menu in Chillies in Crouch End?

RickyT if you would rather have small cold cheese than gooey sticky chocolate cake you are clearly on crack.

― Emma, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

(I think the worst pudding I ever had was in a Thai restaurant and consisted of banana in sort of warm coconut milk stuff which managed to be ickily sweet and grotesquely salty all at once and was really quite foul).

― Emma, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

indian desserts are good tho ptee! and there are many different kinds

japanese desserts are nummy too when they have them: green tea flavored things, red bean ice cream, grass jelly, the milkshakes with the giant tapioca eyeballs and the funny straws

the only cuisine which i have not found good desserts yet is tibetan - i tried the one billed as the 'dalai lama's favorite dessert' last time i was at one, and it was rather dull and aggressively minimalist. i will try a difft one next time - it just takes rigorous testing to find a good one

― geeta, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i used to have a very sweet tooth. nothing more of a treat than woolies pick'n'mix. now i r growed up (somewhere in the journey between 28 and 30) i rarely go for the dessert. and what emma said about starters.

― Alan T, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Arrrr, me hearties, I do like a good drag on the old pipe now and then, truth be told. Why else did you think the varmints sacked me?

― Captain Birdseye, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Mmm, Geeta is right about Japanese, I have had some nummy green tea icecreamy things before. And Alan has reminded me that there is a pick 'n' mix mere seconds away in Top Shop and I can use my discount card to buy a HUGE bag of it whenever I like. I have a very sweet tooth indeed. Maybe if I develop a crack habit I will grow out of it though...

― Emma, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

'woolies pick 'n mix' = ???

― geeta, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Green tea ice cream is indeed excellent, and a good pistachio kulfi is admittedly also ace. However the starters of both cuisines are miles ahead.

In Japan the sale of ice cream is often denoted by a large plastic cone outside the shop bearing a green Mr Whippy-esque top. I saw one with a lavender coloured top and though, hmm, that will be nice and fruity. It was actually lavender flavour - which tasted of old ladies.

― Pete, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Woolies pick'n'mix = assorted loose candy sold in Woolworths by weight.

― RickyT, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Woolies = Woolworths. Pick 'n' mix = glorious buffet of additive- packed sugary treats e.g. cola bottles, strawberry bootlaces, gobstopppers, jelly beans, chocolate buttons, liquorice allsorts etc. which you PICK from the container with a big scoop and MIX up in a big bag which gets heavier and heavier as you go around then lighter and lighter as you scoff the lot.

― Emma, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

RickyT's description is clearly that of a man with little time for the joys of pick 'n' mix.

― Emma, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I be preferring the fishfingarrrs, myself.

― Captain Birdseye, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Maybe they could do a savoury pick 'n' mix featuring fishfingers, mini kievs, cocktail sausages, lumps of cheese (actually some supermarkets already do this) etc. to keep you happy?

― Emma, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Cheese pick and mix is a grebt idea, but the execution is often poor with shitty baby bels and those smoked cheese sausage things dominating the selection.

― RickyT, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Has anyone else noticed that they don't make Love Hearts with mean sayings anymore? It's all stuff like "text me"...how lame is that?

― jel --, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, I really miss those ones with 'Fuck Off Mr Tiny Penis' on them.

― Emma, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

hate hearts! gap in the market there!

― jel --, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Between Emma's they might get all tetchy about sitting waiting for you to demolish your pud and Pete's It was actually lavender flavour - which tasted of old ladies, I AM BESIDE MYSELF. Oh, for the days when I had time to read every thread...

― Dan Perry, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

this must have been posted before but... behold GOFF ♥s
http://www.lanceandeskimo.com/brothers/images/heartsofdarkness.jp g

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

fourteen years pass...

there is never a situation whereby it is acceptable to skip dessert and fp for asking

― spud called maris (darraghmac), Tuesday, 9 May 2017 23:05 (eight years ago)

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