Do you adjust your dining times?

Eating early is a habit I've never been able/willing to break. My kids were heavily involved in sports while growing up so we ate at 5 and were out the door 8 days a week. It's ingrained in me and even while in France and Italy we're often of of the first to arrive. I remember in Venice, we showed up at 5 to a neighbourhood restaurant with a school nearby. We were ordering dinner while the locals were all gathered, drinking wine and picking up their kids from school.

Yes. We usually eat 5p at home, so we are forced to adjust as early eaters which isn’t hard since we are adjusting so many hours anyhow. That said, I don’t sleep well on a freshly full stomach and I like an early morning stroll- I can’t sleep in. So we adjust to when most restaurants start service usually about 7p and enjoy some after dinner relax time and usually a bit of a walk.

I will say 7-730p reservations while quiet at start most places (as any restaurant is at start of service) were bustling and loud by 8- so we never were dining alone or anything!

I have, but probably unfortunately for my digestive system, I never adjusted back. It suits my family's time clock to eat late. After being out exploring all day, I like some downtime in late afternoon/early evening, then we're ready to get out for a long meal.

Never trust a proper sit-down restaurant in Italy that serves cooked food at 5 pm. Especially if it's a place open for lunch.

Yes, we adjust to dining times in other countries. We have always eaten dinner at 7-7:30 at home.Spain was the most difficult when a local friend picked us up for dinner at 10:30 pm in Madrid.

We do adjust, especially in Italy in warm weather. A 9PM summer evening dinner outdoors is lovely. We used to leave our apartment in Parioli no earlier than 8-8:30PM in summer and make our way to a 9PM reservation. In winter, we dined about 8PM.

Digestion issues are dealt with by a nice walk after dinner and a grappa.

But in the north of Italy, where we go each autumn, the dining hours resemble Switzerland and we find dining around 7PM is common and some of the restaurants do not seat after 9PM at least in the fall.

Lunch is later, too. No earlier than 1PM in traditional places. Stave off starvation in late afternoon with a gelato or take an aperitivo with something to nosh on for cocktail hour. I was always amazed by how many Italians were getting gelato for their kids right about the time-of-day American mothers would traditionally admonish their children to "not spoil your dinner!"

We find this late dinner times to be one of the more problematic aspects of traveling. You almost have to dine late because restaurants are not even serving before 830pm in places like Spain. In the larger cities often you can find a place to eat before then. Others, nothing.
That timeframe is way late for us. Yet, we may have no choice.
The wisdom of adjusting your eating times is almost a moot point as far as it goes. There is no wisdom so much as necessity.
Dining times and your tourism habits may not mix either for dining during the day. The window for much service for lunch is often 12-3. Therefore you had better get in there and eat. You sightsee or have a tour that ends after 3 and you are out of luck. Those times are a sort of crunch anyway. To get a table often requires you to sit down by 12:05. It is amazing how fast they fill up. Then the waiters are flying around doing it all. Hard to get their attention. If you wait until later, post 1430, then you may see open tables, but not cleaned yet. Now you come in and the servers are eyeing you like you are late and more work for them. You are on the tail end of it all.
I would say that although I like Spain and Italy, I do not like this having to fit into times that are hours off my usual. It is actually a chore.

Nope. I thought it was standard health advice to avoid eating late.

Its a choice for us of being up and out early, vs staying up late. Cant stand the idea of eating that late, when I'm usually winding down and ready for bed. Bigger lunches, and light dinners early. But then, for me, food and the dining experience is not as important as it is for many people.

I always adjust to local dining times. It's not even about "trying to live like a local" for me, as much as it is to have the widest variety of dining options.

In pretty small towns and rural areas there may just not be very many options if you try to dine at off times; in big cities there's always options at off-times, but they may not be very good because they are mostly doing tourist business.

I should also note that I don't particularly like to self-cater/cook on vacation (breakfast aside), unless I'm traveling in a big group and the cooking is also hanging-out time. I cook most of my meals at home and enjoy it a lot, but I want to indulge on vacation and eat at restaurants (or at the very least do simple take-outs/prepared foods from markets). So being able to have a wide variety of dining out experiences is particularly important to me.

We find this late dinner times to be one of the more problematic
aspects of traveling. That timeframe is way late for us. Yet, we may
have no choice.

Lucky for me, eating is just something I need to do from time to time and so I'm not too concerned about making it into a travel experience. I'll take what I can get, when I want it. Unfortunately, dining was the low point of my only RS tour to this point. In French tradition, we ate late and took our time. My wife loved it because she's a social butterfly and enjoyed the long, leisurely meals, but it drove me crazy. I wanted to eat and get back to exploring. There were 2 or 3 others like me on the tour and so we would politely sneak out if things were taking too long.

I’m surprised no one has yet mentioned the solution we arrived at. We eat our main meal at mid-day. Very often, restaurants offer a “menu”; i.e., a set 2 or 3 course meal, at that time. It’s usually a very good value. Our evening meal can be tapas or the equivalent, in places where they are offered.

Rosalyn, that’s what I generally do regardless of where I’m at. I like food, but I’m more interested in site seeing, so something quick, light and easy in the evening suits me.

We don't, unless we have no choice, such as in Orvieto, where literally nothing was open for dinner until 7:30 pm.

Like Allan, I'm not one to linger over a meal. I get restless. I don't drink wine, I don't smoke, and I don't consume caffeine in the evening. Also, as my husband and I have aged, we've become more prone to reflux, and doctors have advised us to eat dinner AT LEAST 4 hours before going to bed. We don't want to stay up until after midnight.

Like Rosalyn, we usually have our big meal at lunch when we're travelling. Often, you pay less for the same food then, anyway.

In Italy we tend to push all our meals to a later time and lunch becomes our main meal around 1:30 with a light dinner after 8pm. But we normally eat a 7:30 at home so it's not that hard. For me the hard part is having my main meal midday.

If you like to eat early I recommend most of France outside of Paris. Our experience was that in both Champagne & Provence - 6 pm is dinner time and we found in smaller towns trying to find dinner after 7pm was difficult.

Yes, when my husband is traveling with me. We enjoy the ambiance of a full restaurant of local people enjoying the social aspects of their meals during the later hours. We typically order a main dish or pasta - not both, and a salad. Any more and we aren’t able to sleep with a full stomach.

Yes & no, if I am traveling solo, sometimes I just have some veggies & a yogurt or piece of cheese in my room. Other times, I will go out later and enjoy a meal if it’s very close to my hotel. (I always stay in the city center to have that option.)

Years ago when we stayed at Padova, we couldn’t find any restaurants when we were walking around in the evening. Then they “magically appeared” after about 7:30pm. Outdoor “happy hour” tables transformed into tables covered with nice tableclothes, and we had wonderful meals, switching to 8:00pm or so.

Yes we do, we are not on our normal schedule what's so ever in all aspects.
We find that when we travel our eating schedule is 100% different than at home. We tend to always eat a big breakfast and just nosh throughout the day on local food which is just whenever we get hungry or something looks good (those 2pm beer/spritz breaks in Italy always come with some hearty snacks) which tends to push back our dinner time (if we even eat dinner). If I want to dine at a specific restaurant and reservations are required we eat later (8-9pm ish) and kinda watch our eating about 4 hours before so we are actually hungry, nothing worse than going to a restaurant you had research and are hyped up about..just to show up not hungry!
One Summer night in Paris we were hanging out at the Luxembourg Gardens enjoying the picnickers and just enjoying the night and conversation when we got a little hungry and decided to get dinner, it was still light out and we were thinking it was like 6:30....it was 9PM.

It is up to you, but most restaurants open at 7pm for dinner and I wouldn't go to a restaurant that serves dinner before 7pm in Italy, because you are likely to be in a tourist trap and get the left-overs from lunch.
In big cities, especially Rome and south, they eat even later (for sure after 9pm), but even in that case 7:30-8pm is an ok time (in Florence people eat at home between 8 and 9pm, a bit earlier than Rome). Besides your body already has to adapt to the 6-9 hours of time zone difference, so it's not that your body clock isn't already messed up for at least the first week. I know some people don't like to go to bed with a full stomach, but when you are on vacation in Italy I'm sure that after dinner you will go out on a stroll like the locals, rather than sit on a sofa watching tv like most people do at home in the US.
In the countryside (for example Tuscan villages) people generally have dinner at home between 7 and 8 pm, so you will be totally in synch with the locals at that time.

We always eat our main meal as a late lunch in Italy. We finish up our morning activity around 1:00-2:00 and then head for an hosteria or ristorante. We chose one that is full of locals. We usually have a snack or street food later in the evening. The last time we dined with Italians in the evening I nearly fell asleep at the table!

At home, we eat dinner at 5:30pm and go to sleep by 9:00pm. We like to get up at 5:00am or 6:00am. Eat lunch at 11:00am.

We spend the two weeks before a trip gradually changing over to Italy time by 5 hours, which eliminates jet lag for us. My jet lag used to be really bad. So, you'd think we could eat dinner in Italy at normal Italian times, and we have tried. The food in Italy is one of the main reasons we go every year, and eating dinner in a restaurant would be great.

But somehow we always end up still getting up super early, eating a big lunch at 1:30pm or so (for a couple hours or more), and then having some kind of snack or sandwich or something light my husband cooks for us at around 6:00pm.

We do go out in the evening, but just don't want a second restaurant meal. It doesn't seem to make any difference if we eat a smaller, lighter, shorter, earlier lunch. Force of habit, I guess. It's kind of annoying.

We tend to.

Dutch is easy - early.

French - to a degree, but we eat very simply in France and the places we go are all open by 6 or 7.

German - easy - I've never been to a biergarten closed when we wanted to eat.

Swiss - varies by Canton but not late except in Ticino - we eat at places that close early and are cheap.

Never been to Spain so haven't tried there but I would expect to adjust.

Italy - yes, both lunch and dinner. After all, when you get cakes for breakfast and you can have pizza and gelato on demand, it isn't difficult.

I think most people get hung up on the time they eat, without really looking at the way they eat, and adjusting to the country they are in.

I have heard responses on this forum, in a variety of meal/food related topics, where people insist they eat a large breakfast (hopefully "free" buffet at your hotel), all but skip lunch or reduce it to a snack, then cram in a big supper.

For most of the Mediterranean countries, this is a Polar opposite, where they only do a light breakfast, focus heavier foods on a mid-day meal....usually later than "noon", and in the evening focus on a lighter meal, with an Aperitivo or tapa to tide you over in late afternoon/early evening.

So to the original question, yes, I adjust the time and type of meal to where I am.

My biggest challenge is in regards to my wife, she does not eat much for breakfast...fine...but gets busy or carried away during the day, skipping a mid-day meal, then wants to eat at 4:00 PM. I find I really have to structure the meals and make her take a break, eating something mid-day at a sit-down place, then things are fine.

Fortunately we eat pretty late normally around 8:00 pm. I find part of the travel experience is to eat like a local, whether you're talking about timing or substance of the meal. I make all of our dinner reservations for 8:30. so I never have to remember what time it is!

I haven't been to Spain yet (hopefully in the next 1-2 years), but that's what comes to mind seeing this topic.

I'm a natural night owl. Never get to sleep before 1 or 2 AM no matter how I try.

Eating, to me, is part of the travel experience. I eat at whatever time is customary for the place I'm visiting.

Light breakfast, late lunch--usually not planned just busy doing things--and then dinner. Sometimes, I may just pick up a few things at the market at dine in my room depending on how tired I am.

I have heard responses on this forum, in a variety of meal/food
related topics, where people insist they eat a large breakfast
(hopefully "free" buffet at your hotel), all but skip lunch or reduce
it to a snack, then cram in a big supper.

Paul, that would be us. We get up REALLY early at home (too many years of corp. conditioning) and go to bed earlier than most do as well. Once we adjust to the local time zone, we tend to fall into the same schedule. We do skip sit-down lunches as we often find that's a good time for sightseeing (and I just can't eat that much in a day) so we're pretty much ready for a serious, pre-dinner adult beverage break by 4:00 - 5:00 or so in the afternoon. 7:00 for dinner? We've done it plenty of times but have also opted for earlier options if we're just too pooped or hungry to wait. It doesn't happen ALL the time but we've been warmly welcomed into a fair amount of restaurants at early opening hours, and no complaints about the meals.

We also have evening walkabouts after supper, whatever time that is. At twilight or after dark, when most others are at table, is a great time for a stroll! :O)

Forget evening dining for some local flavor. If you're driving, keep an eye out for humble looking places with impromptu 'Pranzo di Lavoro' signage - - it's the Italian equivalent of a truck stop. Good prices and you eat with the locals usually 2 courses plus a glass of wine with from 2 to 4 choices each of primo and secondi. The food quality varies from ordinary to outstanding, but you'll seldom not appreciate the value. Often starting at noon and peaking at quarter to 1PM in our area. About 10 to 13 Euro pp.

That's true Mike. The AutoGrill is the only restaurant name I remember from our Italy tour.

I tend to treat the shift in meal times as a type of jet lag, and shift my day accordingly. Spanish meal times are no issue if you start your day ~0.5-1 hour later than you would in France (as locals tend to do). Sunrise, sunset, shop opening hours... all reflect this anyway - Spain is really in the wrong timezone, by 2 hours in summertime.
Regions with earlier meal times, like Britain, also have clocks set earlier vs. the solar day, so I do the same in reverse.
I have yet to come across regions where lunchtime is not close to solar noon, and this could prove trickier!