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Left holding the bag

Jay Rayner on the etiquette of taking home leftover food from restaurants

Take it away, boys. Photograph: Corbis

Over on his blog the restaurant critic for the New York Times, Frank Bruni, has been investigating the complex etiquette of doggy bags. Which is to say, the taking home from restaurants of leftover food. It's a very big thing in the States, which is not surprising because so are most of their portions. Ever wondered why Americans seem to be the most obese people in the world? Just go order a pizza there and see what you get. A family of four could live under one of those things, let alone off one.

I travel a lot in the US and regularly I'm asked by waiters if I'd like to have what's left 'to go'. At these moments I come over all terribly English. It seems such a gauche, clumsy and, yes, money-obsessed thing to do: hell, I paid for it, and I'm damn well going to eat it whether it's here at your table or back home at mine. Sometimes, of course, it's just risking confrontation. I am a greedy man. Therefore if I have left food on my plate it's almost certainly because I didn't like it.

The more I think about this, however, the more sense it makes.

Restaurants are meant to provide a service and a doggy bag is surely just a part of that. All we have to do is get over our rather British reserve. One commenter on the New York Times blog says they used to take home leftovers when they lived in the US all the time, but when they tried it in a Chinese place here in England, got a toe-curling sneer from the waiter and a husband dying from embarrassment on the other side of the table.

Another poster suggests that it's actually illegal here. It isn't. But we have always lagged behind the US when it comes to matters of service. For example, most mid- to high-end restaurants in Britain would balk at the notion of preparing their food to go. In the US few do. I well remember, for reasons too complicated to explain, being holed up with wife and infant child in a small hotel in Columbus, Ohio and getting superb Italian food to go, from a place around the corner called Rigsby's Kitchen, which just happened to be one of the best restaurants in the city. (And it wasn't just good for Columbus, which is actually a strong food city. It was good for anywhere). That to me seemed the height of civilisation.

The doggy bag thing is surely just an extension of that can-do will-do culture. Certainly there is a lot to be said for being able to draw out your experience of a restaurant by taking something home with you. Funnily enough, the one sector of the industry where that happens in this country is at the very top end.

After a meal at the two Michelin star Petrus not long ago, we were sent home with a lovely carton of their chocolates, and the sight of them in their dinky box - followed by the dark crunch of properly tempered chocolate beneath my teeth - was a delicious reminder of the meal just gone. I know of other places that send their customers home with freshly baked brioche for the morning and even little pots of jam. That all seems to me a very good idea. So why shouldn't we take home our leftovers too, whether from the local Chinese or one of Gordon Ramsay's gaffs?

But what do other people feel about this? Is this a customer problem, here in the UK? Are we, as ever, just too uptight to ask for what we really want? Have you asked to take home leftovers? What was the response? And if you do ask, are there any rules the rest of us should follow? For example how much needs to be left for it to qualify to come home? And what do you do with it? Is it reheated for lunch the next day, or scoffed in the cab on the way home when you suddenly discover you aren't quite as full as you thought?

Tell us your dirty doggy-bag secrets. We want to know.

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