Thanksgiving is a holiday full of expressing gratitude and appreciation for those with whom you are closest to. On the fourth Thursday of November, families, and friends gather together for Thanksgiving Dinner, which includes turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and pumpkin pie, to name a few of the holiday’s traditional dishes.
However, there has been a trend growing the last couple of years that see many Americans ditching the Thanksgiving Dinner preparations and go out to eat at restaurants instead on the fourth Thursday of November. A 2017 survey revealed that nearly 1 in every 10 adults planned to eat their holiday meal at a restaurant.
People opt to have their Thanksgiving Meals at a restaurant for a variety of reasons from saving money to try something new to picky eaters in their family, to name a few reasons. Having gone out to eat on Thanksgiving Day two years ago, I can say it is definitely worth trying as there are many restaurants and hotels open for service. The food is nothing but the best quality.
With that being said, listed below are 6 Reasons Why You Should Go Out To Eat On Thanksgiving Day This Year:
The day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday, which perhaps the second most important (unofficial) holiday in November. Black Friday is the day where many stores offer highly promoted sales and open very early, such as midnight. Stores are jam-packed with people trying to take advantage of the best deals available on items. Things get so crazy during Black Friday shopping that even fights break out between customers.
For those who love shopping, this is a great excuse/reason to skip the traditional meal and dine out on Thanksgiving Day instead. Not only will you score neat deals on items such as clothing and electronics, but you can also get ahead start on buying Christmas presents for those close to you for a great price!
Many people are picky when it comes to food. For Thanksgiving Dinner, there’s going to be certain traditional foods that some will love, and some will hate, including the turkey. Those who dislike turkey (myself included) are called “Turkey Haters”.
Another good reason to dine out at a restaurant and/or hotel on Thanksgiving Day is so that those who are Turkey Haters or just picky eaters in general, can have more options to select from to eat. This can also apply for people who are vegetarians, vegans or have other special dietary needs.
As stated earlier in the introduction, the number of people dining out on Thanksgiving Day has risen over the last couple of years. A lot of restaurants across the country are open for service on Thanksgiving Day. Do some research on the local restaurants in the city you reside in and check out their Thanksgiving menus. The photo below depicts a Thanksgiving Dinner Menu from an Italian Restaurant.
When it comes to any major holiday, chefs pull out all the creative stops on their menus to produce dishes that are either a twist on the classic items (depending on the holiday) or just plain traditional ones. Regardless of what items are on any restaurant’s or hotel’s Thanksgiving Menu, you will enjoy a delicious meal with a wonderful presentation and leave the place on a full stomach.
Regardless of the number of people showing up, preparations for a Thanksgiving Day Meal take up a lot of time. While those who love to cook might enjoy the process of preparing the big meal, it also means that the cooks will be spending a lot of time away from his/her loved ones.
If you want to spend more time with your extended family members, the option of going out to eat on Thanksgiving Day is a great one to consider. Some families have relatives from all over the country gathering together in one place to spend quality time together. By dining out, the cooks can use that time they would have spent on cooking and cleaning on catching up with those relatives that he/she doesn’t get to see often.
In order to prepare a Thanksgiving Dinner, whoever’s hosting it needs to buy all the ingredients necessary to create each dish at least a few days to a week in advance due to popular demand. It takes a couple of hours to cook everything on the actual Thanksgiving Day. All of this work can result in a lot of stress and have the cooks running around the kitchen like a chicken with their head cut off!
For those who don’t want to deal with the endless amount of stress when it comes to preparing and hosting Thanksgiving Dinner, consider a family outing to a nice restaurant on the day of the actual holiday instead. Many hotels and/or restaurants across the country offer special Thanksgiving menus. Everyone still gets to enjoy the delicious and festive meal in a peaceful environment. Furthermore, everyone in your party gets to take it all in and relax as the meal goes by.
If there are relatives that you don’t get along with and/or cannot stand for whatever the reasons are, this creates a potential problem for which house the family’s holiday meal will be held in. Also, there can be some drama brewing during the dinner if tensions are bad between some relatives. This can result in everyone’s Thanksgiving to be ruined and you certainly (if not apart of the drama) don’t need to put up with the petty arguments.
Dining out on Thanksgiving Day is a great excuse to use to pass on having a traditional meal with those annoying relatives. Make up some lame excuse as to why you and the rest of your immediate family cannot make it. On Thanksgiving Day, go out to eat a nice restaurant for a nice drama-free holiday meal with those in your immediate family.
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