Food and dating - Tracey's take on a new type of courting

by Tracey Lupton
Starlet
Tuesday, 10th January 2012

Dating in London is kind of like a dodgy Chinese buffet – there are so many different choices out there, exciting and shiny, but after a while they all just end up giving you a dodgy tummy and a wave of nausea if you have too much.

When I first became single three years ago, I wanted to try it all; the greasy spring rolls, the flash dover sole with oyster sauce and the fun sweet and sour chicken. I enjoyed meeting and eating to my hearts content. It seemed like life was just a big banquet and most of the time I didn’t even need to pay!

It was good times, for a while. But left over Chinese eventually starts to look congealed and cheap. It doesn’t taste as nice the morning after. In the past few months I started to feel there might be more. I’d had my fill from the buffet, I wanted a la carte.

So, as new year 2011 turned into Spring I chucked away my takeaway menus and upped my game. I quite fancied trying something I’d never tried before, going to places I’d never even heard of and meeting a nice boy, a good egg, starting a classy affair that stood out from all the others. Quality is far superior to quantity. It was a new experience, the first time in my life when I was kind of looking for something (“a nice, fun boy who thinks I’m ace”) rather than being very content in a relationship or very content out of one.

I applied to be on ‘Come Dine with Me’ in July as part of my summer of new things and ended up on a whole new experience called ‘Come Date with Me’. Perfect. Boys and food. And high quality on both was promised. The crew would choose boys that I would like and get on with and could, potentially end up being someone to skip round London with eating sushi and steak. What could possibly go wrong?! Well nothing as it turns out. I met five fantastic and funny men who wooed me in an old school gentlemanly fashion, well apart from Will! We laughed our way through the week gorging on delicious food (other that my curry), great wine and brilliant conversations. It showed me that there are lots of a la carte guys out there and most of them, hopefully, won’t drop me on my head during a dance off!!

Dating in London has now opened up to be one of those all-in-one restaurants with plenty of different, appealing options and only a few of them are greasy and bad for me. I’m now taking the time to study the menu a lot more closely so as to avoid getting indigestion or wasting my time on something that is full of nasties. There are still plenty of takeaway menus landing on my little red, stripy doormat but it’s much easier to chuck them in the bin and wait for something fabulous to come along.

Tracey Lupton is the star of the first series of Channel 4's Come Date With Me. If you missed the first airing the series is availiable via the 4OD catchup service.

topic tags: attraction, come date with me, first date, flirting, relationships

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about the author

Tracey Lupton is the star of Channel 4's first series of Come Date With Me. She describes herself as a short, gobby northerner with a penchant for cheese. She joins the Dating Trail team to chronicle her experiences on the series and of her life as a single girl about town.

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