Making a meal for a date: When is the right time?

By Gina Cherelus

In a scene from the 1997 romantic comedy “Love Jones,” a young poet named Darius recounts to his friend over a game of pool how his first date went with Nina, a beautiful photographer he recently met. They ended up having sex that night, and the next morning, he got up and made breakfast.

“You made breakfast?” his friend asks in disbelief. Darius barely knows this woman.

“I was in there cooking,” Darius answers.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait — you cooked what?”

“A cheese omelet.”

Cooking in the early stages of dating can be impossibly loaded with meaning. Sometimes, as in Darius’ case, it’s an impulsive act that signals real feelings — whether or not the cooker is aware of them yet. It can also be an intentional Friday night plan. Regardless, there’s usually a lot of thought that goes into that first meal. And a lot riding on it, too.

Despite Darius’ claims that he and Nina were “just kickin’ it,” the eggs were a clear sign that he had already fallen hard.

So when is the right time to cook for someone you’re dating but not yet in a relationship with? Do you try a new recipe, or stick to what you know? And do certain dishes create certain impressions? An editor I work with joked that once you roast a chicken together, you’re in full relationship mode. And if you ask social media, any variation of pasta Alfredo is hopelessly played out.

One morning I woke up with someone I was dating and had the urge to make breakfast. Usually I would have waited until he had left or would have kept it simple with eggs, but then I remembered he had mentioned liking French toast. Before I knew it, I was dipping slices of bread into milk and beaten eggs to pan-fry and eat with a man I wasn’t officially with. I later laughed at the realisation that, like Darius, I liked this person a lot more than I was able to see at the time.

Kimberly Cortese, a product manager in Smyrna, Georgia, finds a lot of joy in cooking, she said, and used to do it almost instinctively in the early stages of dating. But after making dinner one too many times for men she was seeing, Cortese, 29, realised it was becoming an expectation. So she created a rule for herself: no cooking until she’s sure the relationship is serious.

“My way to show people that I care would be to cook,” Cortese said. “But then it would be this dynamic where I would never get taken out anymore.”

Kimberly Cortese, a product manager in Smyrna, Georgia, finds a lot of joy in cooking, she said, and used to do it almost instinctively in the early stages of dating. (Source: Freepik)

She formulated her rule a few years ago after she had dated two men in a row — each for less than a year — and had started cooking for them by the second or third date. To be fair, both relationships took place during the early pandemic, when going out was difficult. But as the only one putting in the effort to cook — her go-to meals included a Korean-style barbecue tofu and pasta — she never felt fully appreciated.

She even made Thai peanut tofu with red peppers, broccoli and rice for one of the guys the night he came over to dump her in December 2020. He waited until after the meal to break the news.

“If you’re just coming and ripping the Band-Aid off, at least have the forethought to bring takeout so I wouldn’t have to cook,” she said. “He let me make a whole meal.”

“At that point,” she added, “I said, ‘I’m never doing that again.’”

Brett Holzhauer, a financial content writer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said that cooking early on had been a fantastic way for him to grow closer in the dating process. Although he grew up steeped in a “traditional dating cycle” that assumes “the woman is going to be cooking,” he enjoys tying on an apron.

“I think it’s a very warm welcome as a guy to say, ‘Hey, let me cook for you, let me take care of you,’” he said. “It shows intent, it shows care — it shows an ounce of love, if you will.”

From a logistical perspective, Holzhauer, 30, who enjoys making Mexican dishes and Italian food because “it’s romantic,” believes that if you’re a good cook and are really serious as a guy pursuing a girl, it’s a lot less expensive and a great way to step away from the norm.

“I just wouldn’t recommended it for a first date, obviously, because going over to someone’s house for a first date is a little weird,” said Holzhauer, who is in a new long-distance relationship with a woman in Chicago.

In heterosexual relationships, it can feel as if there’s more at stake when women cook for men early on than when men cook for women. Is your kind gesture reinforcing gender norms? Does whipping out the pot and spatula too soon suggest that you’re desperate to be made a girlfriend? It’s difficult if you genuinely enjoy cooking and want to share that, but having a little discernment and strategy never hurts.

After a taking about two years off from dating, Cortese says she is now in a happy relationship. She didn’t cook for her boyfriend until about a month and a half in, though. For their first meal, she simply made rice and “something microwaveable.”

“He was so grateful and happy, and we hung out, and he kept coming back and we kept having very, very basic meals,” Cortese said. Now they split the cooking duties, so she can continue doing what she loves without feeling that she has to.

Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.