According to data collected by the online travel agency Expedia, the Dutch are the first people on the planet to sit down for dinner. Photo: AFP Relaxnews
With a 9 pm curfew now in place in several French cities and Italy's Lombardy region, restaurant owners are calling on people in affected zones to consider changing their dining habits to eat their evening meal earlier. Some of them use the example of other countries, such as the UK, to entice diners to embrace earlier eating as evening services are brought forward.
So, at what time do people around the world really sit down to dinner?
Early eaters
Surprisingly, the English aren't the earliest eaters when it comes to tucking into their evening meal. According to data collected by the online travel agency Expedia, the Dutch are the first people on the planet to sit down for dinner. While many Americans don't follow the tradition of sitting down to eat at the same time every night, families often dine not long after 6pm. Next at the dinner table are the Cubans and the Vietnamese, starting dinner at 6.30pm.
The 7-to-8 shift
Dinner times in many countries influenced by Anglo-Saxon culture are more or less the same as in France, so between 7 and 8pm. That's the case in Australia, Canada, Kenya and the Philippines, where dinner is on the table at 7 pm on the dot. In Japan, Thailand, Russia and Germany, dinner tends to be at 7.30pm.
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