This seems like an under served market. When I was in SE Asia I loved the fact that I could purchase small meals off the street at regular intervals. They were inexpensive and hassle free.

Most American restaurant portions are absurdly sized. Any meal I get in a restaurant these days is almost always lunch for the next day too.

Ridiculous idea to downvote. I almost never finish restaurant meals, I’ll take the second half for lunch the next day or give it to someone on the walk home.

But suggesting portion control would be advocating more personal responsibility, so maybe that explains peoples’ “disagreement.” So much easier to toss in the trash, right?

I always feel bad when asking to pack the leftovers at the restaurant.

is it rude or a sign of being poor? I'm unsure.

If it weren’t expected, restaurants wouldn’t keep stacks of to-go boxes lying around. As for a sign of being poor, who gives a shit? I’m obviously wealthy enough to eat at your restaurant. And if you’d like me to share some of that wealth again, you’ll box thus shit up without comment.

But enough anonymous internet tough guy talk, I’ve been taking home food for decades and no one has ever uttered a word. Olive Garden to $200/person, it’ll get boxed with a smile. Hell, waitstaff often come around and ask if you want a box (which I sometimes take to mean, “I’d like to turn this table, Slowpoke.” <g>).

In the U.S. no one cares. Maybe you'll get a look in a very expensive restaurant but they'll probably do it anyway.

I've had food boxed up in a ~$100 per person restaurant before and it was completely normal for them.

Nah, they know they're serving you twice as much food as a human can eat.

Cut everything neatly in half when it arrives and move it off to the side for easy boxing. Then eat a sensible amount and ask for a box for the rest.

Places that don't expect this will signal as much by serving you a portion that wont make you ill.

Asking to pack the leftovers is a complement! It says, this was so delicious, I want to have it again. I've had chefs at small restaurants thank me with huge smiles when I asked for a box.

I do feel bad when I can't (or won't) finish, and don't ask for a box. Aiming to eat only half the meal, so you have a good amount to bring home can sometimes help avoid overconsumption, too.

At least here (Germany) it's totally normal and no one would think anything of it.

> Is it rude or a sign of being poor?

Thinking about wether or not it is a sign of being poor is a sign of being poor. What would Scrooge McDuck do?

> What would Scrooge McDuck do?

Whatever the f* he wants.

No one cares

> advocating more personal responsibility

It's interesting that nobody wondered people are just concerned that food would get more expensive.

Restaurants set their prices by complex rules, and if people just started some movement to reduce portion sizes on the "if you want more, you can always ask for 2" argument, with no extra change, it's almost a certainty that prices would raise.

I believe part of that is that usually the bulk of the cost of food is the labor and not the ingredients unless you have something 'extra fancy' with ingridents. If it takes as much work to make a cup of pasta as it does to make a quart or gallon of pasta.

An extra serving would add more labor as the expensive part and not save anything. The way to avoid that would be to keep a fresh surplus in the kitchen which would get wasted anyway.

Essentially it would unfortunately amount to 'efficiency theater' without very large assumption changes - sodas for instance have free refills because it is already a massive profit margin due to the sticky price-point where everyone expects it to be a dollar something while the actual cost is measured in pennies. You would die of water intoxication before they would realize a loss from refills.

Bingo. I feel coffee shops are the worst for this. No I don't want a bucket of milk still with only one shot of coffee in.

Theres also the problem that no one ever complained that the portions were too big. Small portions could make people feel ripped off.

Agreed. And they won't sell the "kid" portions to adults.

One of the nice things about having kids is that you have a socially acceptable way to purchase a happy meal for yourself. (Because how are they to know how many kids you have.)

It's the only workable way to get a sensible fast food portion size.

Restaurant portions of of crappy food (high calorie, low nutrient, heavily over salted) are large.

Restaurant portions of food you’d actually do well to eat on a regular basis aren’t large. They’re usually tiny compared to DIY at home.

Order a “pasta with scallops” for an extreme example of how many you actually get vs what you could get if you cooked it yourself.

The amount of scallops is probably reasonable, but the pound and a half of pasta you get is not.