In a phenomenon which arguably expresses more about the role of motorway service stations in modern British life than the pub, a fair proportion of customers were not long-distance travellers but local people who use the facility as a sort of out of-town dining area.
5.30pm – pre-dinner drinks The city centre is in the process of being invigorated following the unfortunate trend of large out-of-town shopping and dining complexes luring people away from the city's heart.
Tesco were keen to bring footfall back to their out-of-town stores by acquiring casual dining chain Giraffe and coffee shop chain Harris & Hoole and introducing branches within Tesco stores but the strategy has failed to take off with the retailer forced to close six unprofitable Harris & Hoole cafés in London.
She's dining with her out-of-town parents at a Manhattan restaurant where she's about to learn that, after two years of subsidy, they're cutting off the money.
In the second half of the 20th century, cities began building municipal convention sites, often making the space available below cost to attract out-of-town conventions that would bring in hotel, dining and tax revenue.
In Nora Ephron's 1971 Esquire profile of Segal, written during the giddy bloom of "Love Story," she describes dining with the author at a restaurant when a shy, out-of-town couple ask him to sign their menu.
So are out-of-town guests.
The diners are expensively dressed, in an out-of-town way: one evening a woman in furry après-ski boots climbed into the lap of her date for an after-dinner make-out session, and the same night, during Christo's spectacle in Central Park, a family dined in matching orange tops.
Maybe the out-of-town owned Braves felt like the girl not asked to the proverbial dance -- while hometown hero and billionaire Arthur Blank and his dirty birds were being wined and dined -- partially on the city's dime.
Check out some out-of-town shows.
Have that out-of-town seminar looming?
