April 22, 2006: You Can Take It with You

Dear Social Grace,

Is it impolite to take a doggie bag home from a restaurant? I hate the thought of good food being thrown away, and most restaurants serve portions much larger than I'm able to finish. I try to order something with a small portion, but am not always successful.

Sincerely,
Becky

Dear Becky,

I wouldn’t take a doggie bag home from a job-interview meal. But in most other situations -- when you're dining with friends, for instance -- there is nothing wrong with asking that your uneaten food be wrapped up at the end of a meal. The doggie bag is not rude (people have been taking uneaten food home from restaurants for about as long as there have been restaurants -- for themselves or for their pets). You wouldn’t want to wrap up your food yourself without asking -- and, of course, you wouldn’t take food home from a buffet (or from someone’s home, unless it was offered to you). But in many restaurants, the servers offer to-go containers if food is uneaten. I often take food away from restaurants -- if I have an untouched half of a sandwich, for instance, left at the end of a meal, I will sometimes take it to offer to a homeless person who asks me for money or food. I, too, hate to see good food go to waste.

But we are in an interesting gray area here: When enough people think that something is "wrong," a few experts saying that it is not wrong have little effect. People believe what they believe.

It’s like that old English-grammar taboo against "splitting the infinitive": language experts know that this alleged rule is a lot of poppycock, and that it was never a requirement of proper English. But because so many people believe that splitting the infinitive is wrong, some good writers and editors (who know better) are careful to leave them joined when possible, so as not to offend misguided sensibilities.

Etiquette has a few oddly unshakeable "false rules" like this: the ban on white shoes after Labor Day, resting elbows gently on a table, and so on. As with these questions of etiquette, even if I tell you that taking home a doggie bag is well within the bounds of proper behavior, I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t hastily add that, to a lot of people, doing so "looks tacky." You can do with that knowledge what you will.

I hope this is helpful.

Best regards,
Charles