As all single people know, there are many levels of meaning to being asked out upon a Date That Involves Food. (This article's scope does not encompass the semiotics of the "activity date," e.g., a stroll in the city, concert attendance, pool playing, a walk in the park, rock climbing and/or jewelry heisting.)

The Meal: Dinner
The Message: Unified. A Dinner Date is the most traditional kind of date. Those who ask others out on Dinner Dates tend to follow the Romantic and/or Formalist belief that dates are recognizable organic unities, integrated structures which conclude pleasurably and logically. Asking someone out to dinner contains no mixed messages. Dinner means "I am interested in pursuing potential romantic involvement." Dinner = date. The signifier and signified frolic in the freshly ground pepper. As in all dates, however, both individuals retain the right to pretend that there was some misunderstanding, that this is not a date. This generally comes after one individual decides he or she is not interested in future face-sucking and begins thinking wistfully of Xena: Warrior Princess.

The Meal: Lunch
The Message: Mixed. Lunch revels in its own ambiguity, its liminal position poised betwixt work and outside-of-work. Lunch exists outside the scope of the office, since we physically leave the office, but it is by necessity bounded by the strictures of time (and of course, by extension, Death). We know we must quickly return to the office, destroying the magical space of possibility, unless we are the boss or cruising to get fired. When someone asks us on a lunch date, we ask ourselves, "Is this a date, or are we networking? Are we colleagues enjoying a collegial plate of grilled vegetables, or are we future lovebunnies? Is this sourdough roll deliberately resonant with the phrase "a roll in the hay" or is it just me?" As Bakhtin (might have) said, lunch is multileveled, layered, and resistant to unification, its very character as elusive and quirky as the hint of truffle oil in the tagliatelle.

The Meal: Brunch
The Message: Possibility. Brunch holds a sacred position in the meal canon. Brunch is inherently romantic, since it occurs on a weekend (the idiolect: I have but two days of rest out of seven, and I choose to spend part of one of them with you). It also has the status of two meals, as it usually stands in for both breakfast and lunch. Brunch dangles before the bruncher and brunchee a tantalizing sense of what could be, as the entire scheduleless day dances teasingly after the meal. There could be a museum, a movie, a stroll. There is no "Gotta run, I have a meeting." Brunch is the meal of promise.

The Meal: A Drink
The Message: You do not warrant dinner. I am testing the waters to see if you will warrant dinner at a future date to be determined (possibly as soon as after we put down our swizzle sticks).

The Meal: Coffee
The Message: Even more non-committal than a drink. Coffee is coffee is coffee. (However, coffee is a drink if the asking party is in a 12-Step Program.) Coffee, lacking alcohol's liberating effect on the tongue and libido (which is not made up for by its liberating effect on the bowels), can make the drinkers feel stranded in narrative, lost in a sea of awkward conversation forays and pauses. However, coffee can be a gateway to coziness, personal revelations and intimacy, as in "Coffee Talk" and "Coffee Klatsch." Coffee is a dialogic form.

The Meal: Breakfast
The Message: Ambition. Breakfast dates are most common among yuppies in New York and Chicago and other hard-driving cities, where early morning is the only spare time the date-asker possesses. It carries a clear message that the date-asker is powerful and important, and that romance will take a backseat to work. Unless, of course, the breakfast invitation is conveyed across a pillow as a follow-up to an extraordinarily successful Dinner Date.

When the meaning is manifest and you're ready for love, have a meal at one of these romantic restaurants.