How often you eat out is largely a generational thing and to some extent how urban a setting you live.
People my age and older (65 and up now!) in general don't eat out as much as the younger folk. I really wish I knew more 20-somethings and how they live. My impression is that most don't ever cook at home and have what I consider snacks instead of groceries. I know that while I don't think I eat out all that much, I do at least a couple times a week. With modern schedules and working parents and activities, fewer and fewer families eat together on a daily basis. There are reasons on why you can get some really nice sets of china for really cheap at the thrift stores...
Anyway -- I still have a hard time paying as much for a single meal as a week's worth of groceries. But then again, a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, a jug of milk and a few odds and ends costs a lot more than it used to as well... I still look at $20 as being a reasonable expenditure, but it's getting harder to get out of a fast food place for two on that. Heck, even going to bowling date day Jimmy John's for lettuce wraps and drinks is around $35 for us by the time Hubby gets bacon.
For sit down restaurants, I do try and be around $20 each. Still have a wide variety of primarily local joints well within our price point. Don't really go to chains. Was not shocked but absorbed the Texas Roadhouse prices is being about what I expected.
Different topic -- but as a mostly non-cell phone user, I have seen such terrible erosion in the ability of people to wait or interact. I want to slap all those phones out of all those hands and insist on eye contact with the people you are with. But I'm getting old like that
