What's prompted this discussion is a new book called Dinner At Your Door: Tips and Recipes for Starting a Neighborhood Cooking Co-op, certainly a laudable idea for earnest souls who wish to save money, eat well, and bond with a community. The book, according to "the Ethicurean" (via Bittman at Bitten) is designed to

suggest a solution that applies not just to people interested in sustainable, local cooking, but also to mainstream eaters and inexperienced cooks - basically, anyone with busy lives who wants to eat more delicious, homemade meals. Their recommendation is to find like-minded households and start a dinner co-op, embracing core ideas of community.

Well, put like that, it's great. The reality sounds...messy. Beyond vaguely frightening notions of commune-style dumpster-diving (which I'm very sure has nothing to do with the actual book), such concepts strike fear into the heart of the kitchen control freak. To such, ahem, people, there is nothing more frightening than being at the whims of another's tastes and palate. Many of us have poorly-suppressed collegiate memories of meals involving homemade tofu (note: don't try this without a recipe) and gouging our palms in an effort to keep from reaching out and saving a sauce from misplaced creativity or incomplete knowledge. Ruth Reichl's accounts of cooking in a Berkeley coop, at the mercy of self-righteous food faddists, are all too familiar. I speak as someone who can't bear to let my very willing boyfriend fix dinner, as his cooking bears the unmistakable stamp of a youth of impoverished vegetarianism (a dangerous, if common, combo.)

This said, we are obviously the ones who need exactly this sort of thing: relinquishing control, learning to share, growing and changing with the aid of freer spirits...we've all watched A Good Year, or something like it, on illegal download. Don't get me wrong: I love my semi-monthly dining club and eating at friends' homes. But this is quite a different matter from entrusting one's everyday nourishment to others. And to me, my bowl of oatmeal, my cup of soup, my dinner are practically sacramental: one area over which I can exercise my own tastes and whims. To such as I, who fall into despair when hungry or are downcast at a bad meal's wasted opportunities for pleasure and nourishment, the benefits of such a worthy enterprise are obviously not worth the costs in neurosis. For the rest of you, it actually sounds lovely: I'll be over here, hoarding a pumpernickel roll.

Learning To Share: "Dinner At Your Door," By Alex Davis, Diana Ellis, And Andy Remeis [Ethicurean]
On Cooking Together [NY Times]

While traditional gestures like serving ladies first, giving the guy the check and letting women have the banquette seat (courtly or paternalistic?) are far less prevalent than they were — to the confusion of servers everywhere — certain distinctions apparently still apply. Well, obviously: I mean, in an industry where success can hinge on the width of a napkin ring, no one's gonna blow off the divides in a customer base's priorities, expectations and tastes.“Women are looking for somewhere comfortable,” says Mario Batali. “Men are looking for somewhere to show off.”

Now that the old rules don't apply so much anymore — no smart restauranteur is going to assume a woman can't handle a wine list — and some of the gender gap has been closed by fads like the gender-neutral low-carb trend or equal-op annoying foodie-ism, the more fundamental divides between the eatin' sexes are apparently becoming manifest. Since we all love being told about ourselves by groups of strangers, here's the breakdown!

We sit in banquettes: Even though it's no longer the protocol — like any guys still know that rule, anyway — apparently women gravitate towards the seats that give the best view of the room/potential assassins.
We Need Warm Rooms: We apparently "tend to dress with more skin showing" so the thermostat's got to be up.
We Like Healthy Food: "Women more often ask if a menu has leaner, healthier options. Men more often ask if they can get a decent steak."
We Don't Like Crappy Places: "A woman is more likely to take offense if the restrooms are cramped, ugly and messy. "
We Do Like Awesome Places: "She’s also more likely to appreciate color and playfulness in a restaurant’s design, while there’s more risk that a man will be cool to that." Apparently this one mint-green restaurant with a seafood-heavy menu was attracting such a disproportionately female crowd that the owner redid it to make it more gender neutral. “There’s more meat now — a Niman Ranch pork chop, veal breast, a lamb T-bone,” and it's been repainted cream.
We Like Meat But We Like To Be Tricked Into It: "Stephen Starr, who owns Buddakan and Morimoto, said that women more often hesitate if the name or look of a dish is too blunt a reminder that they’re biting into an animal. 'If it’s something that says chorizo with some sort of egg, they’ll eat it,” Mr. Starr said. “If it’s a suckling pig, they’re not going near it.'" (Not true. Suckling pig delicious.)
We Don't Actually Tip Less, But Parties Of Women Still Suck for Waiters: Although the pernicious fiction that women are bad tippers is apparently a myth, we do tend to order less and hold tables hostage four hours so a server can't turn it over.
We're Less Insecure: "A man is more likely to care about being greeted rapturously and treated like an insider," whereas we apparently just want to eat fish and "eggs" in stifling hot mint green rooms, for hours, while seated in a banquette.

Old Gender Roles With Your Dinner? [New York Times]