Personal experience tells us how spectacular Neal’s Yard. Our problem has been its walking distance from our hotels, so for at least one picnic in room we’ve ended up at Paxton & Whitfield without complaint.
Ugh, chips. Not a food group for me. I avoid them like crazy. I’m not a thin person, and don’t limit myself to foods I love but chips have no appeal, little flavor, just greasy filler - I usually am able to substitute a salad, or beans and rice.
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Chips in Scotland are fries. They have better potatoes than most places in North America, and they’re more skilled at frying. 
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Rare to get good fries in restaurants here. I do like them done right - start with a whole potato with skin, julienne fresh, double fry, season well serve with garlic aioli - none of those frozen mushy things out of a food service truck that make money on a plate. Just say “no”.
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Cole slaw for me if available and fresh. Although I prefer a vinegar dressing rather than a mayo dressing.
Really like the Thai cucumber salad the DH makes.
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Not long. After three I want to make my own meal. It is one of the things I do not enjoy about traveling. I love to eat out and try food of any kind when I travel but after a few days of restaurant eating I start to not feel well. I am a meat eater but there are never nearly enough vegetables for me at restaurants. I suppose I could seek out vegetarian places as they are more common now but I also just get tired of the whole restaurant experience at some point. Increasingly so now that many places have no idea what service is. I hate being rushed.
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I’m the same - I like meat but I also like a lot of vegetables on my plate and restaurants do not do that well. Probably too expensive for them. We frequently eat meals with some meat and two or three vegetables instead of rice or noodles or starches. We rarely have bread.
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For me, its three days. But I only include dinner. Often in our family, we will do “birthday weekend” or something to that effect which is usually three nights of not cooking-- maybe going out once and ordering twice. Not set in stone, but while it seems great, after that third night I’m ready to cook. Same when getting home from a vacation, the urge to do things myself.
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Once every 50 days . Up here not to much . Maybe a taco to go for lunch
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The saying at our house is “after 3 days, even fish starts to smell. “
I never stay at anyone’s house more than 3 days, and I try to keep my guests from staying longer than 3 days. Most of my relatives start to get on my nerves around the end of the 3rd day.
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I start charging rent on Day 3.
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I turn up the snark a little each day.
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Since this thread became about houseguests, I’ll add my thoughts. There was a thread here on HO titled to the effect of, “Do you let houseguests use your kitchen?”
My answer now is the same as it was then: no one would ever be at the house long enough to feel the need to use the kitchen and cook for themselves.
Save for immediate family or extreme/emergency circumstances (or getting so drunk you need to crash on the couch overnight), I’m providing you with pamphlets for the nearest lodging. Sorry if that seems cold.
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Just over 700 days , as it turns out. I travelled around Asia for two years and ate out every day. There was the occasional instant noodles with some veg when a guest house had a burner and some pans but I would have eaten out somewhere that day.
In SE and E Asia, especially there is much more a culture of eating out. It’s relatively cheap and often (especially Hong Kong & Singapore) space is at a premium and kitchens are small so eating out often makes sense. Also a very different proposition to having 3 course ALC every day.
I’ll admit there were days when I missed cooking very much. Nowadays we almost always rent a cottage or an apartment. This is probably more of an outcome of renting them during the Covid staycation and realising how much we enjoyed the freedom, rather than a reaction to two solid years of eating out.
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That’s how we felt after a 3-day stay in Barcelona. Yes, the food is amazing, the tapas great, the vermut aplenty, BUT… finding a veg dish was damn near impossible. Jamon, meats, fried potatoes, fried seafood everywhere, but salad? Fuhgeddaboutit. I almost fainted when we discovered an heirloom tomato salad at a tapas bar. We ordered two.
Our GI systems weren’t happy with all the meat & fried stuffs.
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I like Shropshire Blue, although it doesnt have any connection with Shropshire (a county near to me). It originated in Scotland but is now made in Nottinghamshire (which is Stilton country). My fave blue cheese, if ever you come across it is Blacksticks Blue which is based on a traditional farmhouse Lancashire cheese.
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Some 20 years back, we had family members who had to leave the country they were living in and return to the UK. This was not a voluntary matter and was done quickly so they had no accommodation here. They asked if they could stay for a couple of days and then would be going to stay with other of the partners family. It was a lie. Three months later, they were still with us (2 adults, 2 kids). The lies had continued throughout and they were the most inconsiderate of guests. In the end, we had to insist they leave - it was acrimonious and we insisted they leave that evening. There was never an apology for how badly they treated us. I have not spoken to the adults since.
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THREE MONTHS? They would’ve been ejected from casa lingua far sooner than that - likely a month in (if that long), especially when they were being inconsiderate and insincere!
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