I don’t know, man, my Russian parents go out to a restaurant for every single occasion.
Edit: something occurred to me. Are yours from a small town or a rural area? Mine are from Moscow. I have a feeling that might matter.
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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There’s a common old world view that going to a restaurant is either for rich people with too much money or for stupid people that don’t know how to cook. So it’s more a class based frugality thing that then also is a comfort thing because doing something outside the norm would be to be in public and not be in a private space where everyone can be themselves and follow the usual family dynamics. Restaurants are also commonly a special occasion thing too but seems your folks don’t have the memo on that one. Devils advocate, they probably want you to save your money and want more quality time with you and give you the “opportunity” to host them as they have done for you and others in the past and probably they enjoyed doing so?
Perhaps they should cook for you instead. That would be a nice thing to do for their child's bday since they dislike restaurants so much.
They usually cook when I come over, I guess now they expect me to return the favor
It is custom in some cultures, including mine, to host holidays and personal events in your own home and visit friends and family in their homes when it is their turn. There may not be (or have been at the time) a good selection of restaurants, those restaurants might be expensive or exclusive, and inviting someone for a home cooked meal feels like the more personal and thoughtful thing to do. Some older generations have a hard time letting go of these customs without understanding that circumstances have changed (less family and community support, more options for eating out).
It can be exhausting having to regularly host and clean before and after large groups of people on top of all your other responsibilities and I can’t blame anyone for wanting to celebrate in a restaurant or somewhere outside the home.
Are they (post-)soviet boomers? There are some cultural things that I noticed too, some amusing, some frustrating.
- Home food is automatically better than restaurant food, as you said. Also, somehow, any burger is automatically viewed as McDonalds burger (i.e. bad)
- Undercooked food is unacceptable, triggering Americans who love their steak rare.
- Unsolicited advice and unprompted attempts to help.
- Insistence on getting you a gift or accepting a never-requested gift. "Here's a nice thing, it was expensive and difficult to get, you should like it".
- Viewing self as "a burden". Being offered food, comfort, or accomodation is rejected because "I don't want to impose". Sometimes goes into "suffering builds character" mindset, which is nonsense.
Yep that pretty much hits home.
Were Soviet era restaurants so bad that they all prefer home cooked? Or were they unaffordable for the average citizen back then? Or was it just a social norm to cook food for your guests?
AFAICT restaurants were few, expensive, and difficult to get into (i.e. not for regular people on regular basis), and the option for regular people would be stolovaya (cafeteria?) which is simple, probably mediocre food.
So seems like if you don't have the connections and want decent food, make it yourself.
It's more personal and shows live and care. Its special and tastes better.
I get it, but on the other hand I don't want to spend half of my birthday in the kitchen
If you get it, then why are you asking?
I get the appeal of a home cooked meal, but that doesn't automatically mean that going to a restaurant is a bad option. Also I don't get the entitlement, where do their expectations come from?
but that doesn't automatically mean that going to a restaurant is a bad option.
Sure, but that's an opinion, not a question. Clearly they consider it a bad (or at least less desirable) option.
where do their expectations come from?
If as you said this is a Russian thing and not a your parents thing, then presumably default social expectations. That's what they're used to, so that's what they expect you to do, in the same way people in Western countries expect Christmas gifts. There's no deeper answer unless you want the historical background or an explanation of why social expectations exist.
You see Ivan, birthday is for other people to eat, drink, and have fun, not for you.
Kinda like a big wedding in the US I guess? Bride and groom are not the ones having fun.
You had me until "it tasts better".
That's entirely dependent on the cook. And very few home cooked meals are better than average restaurants. There's a reason restaurants and professional cooks can make a living. If home cooking was so much better so often, nobody would bother going out to eat.
I go put to eat because I can get a meal that's almost as good as homemade with about four hours less preparation on my part. That's why people go out to eat.
That's your judgement of your food. It's natural for you to have a number of biases to favor your own cooking. Most notably the 4 hours of effort it takes you.
But home cooking isn't generally that. It's the 20-40min one puts in right after getting home from work. Comparing your most intensive 4h hours of effort against something a restaurant cook does absent mindedly isn't really a comparison. If they put in your effort you wouldn't have a chance.
Well, to be fair, we are talking about "special occasion" food specifically, not weeknight goulash.
It takes very little knowledge or effort for a home cooked meal to cost 1/4 of, and taste better than, 90% of restaurants.
And after a few years of cooking that number rises to 98%+ of restaurants.
You can't pay me to eat at a chain of any kind any more. At this point I have to go to a specialty place (where the entrees are $50 to $100) to eat better than I do at home.
Cheeper sure. Not a chance it's better in blind taste tests. That's all confirmation bias from you putting in the effort to make it yourself. You can't be an objective judge if your own food.
If your food were really that much better than everyone else's you'd be able to make a fortune with your own restaurant. And if you enjoyed it, you might be happier doing that for work instead of whatever you currently do.
On your birthday, you get to pick
Depends one where you live. In the US where I live until you get to $50/person or more all restaurant meals are exactly as your parents say - reheated in some way. Even at that high price level many of the meals are the same reheated things the cheaper ones are serving with better arrangement, but at least then some things are cooked yourself.
You live in Europe - there are some great restaurants there that are cheaper. However there are also a number of reheated garbage just like we have in the US.
It isn't hard to learn to cook for yourself, and once you do it is hard to see why people pay so much money for just garbage food. But people do all the time and don't see anything wrong with it - some even call it good.
What does that have to do with being russian?
I get the sense that it's very common or at least used to be common in Soviet Union to always invite your friends to your home and treat them to home made meals when there was something to celebrate. It seems that going out to restaurants used to be not an option for whatever reason, but I can only guess.
In Soviet Russia the restaurant is you!
That's not uniquely Russian.
You do understand that in communist Russia there were very few restaurants, and only the select few could afford to get in and eat there? Eating out wasn’t a thing at all.
My Russian parents go out for every occasion because they would rather have someone else cook and clean. Plus the food is much more diverse and usually better cooked.
Judging by how now in Russia there are hundreds of thousands of restaurants, I would say that not all Russian parents prefer home cooked meals. But yours do.
I have many russian (+ukrainian/kazakhstan etc.) friends and in fact they have a somewhat different attitude to food and restaurants as compared to europeans.
From my point of view they enjoy preparing food together, everyone brings something with them (salad, pickles, vodka... all of course self made), whereas in european countries I feel its more expected that the host provides the food already on the table or you go to a restaurant.
Very ungrateful and selfish. It's your birthday, your deciding. If they don't like your plans invite someone else.