What Time Is Dinner Served in Europe?

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Dinner commonly refers to the largest and most proper meal of the day in many Western countries.

Traditionally, the most substantial meal used to be consumed near noontime and called dinner. In Western countries, particularly among the nobility and the wealthy, it slowly migrated to later in the 16th to 19th centuries. The word has various definitions relying on culture and may represent a feast of any size eaten at any period of the day. In particular, it is yet periodically used for a meal at midday or in the early afternoon in exceptional circumstances, such as a Christmas dinner. In countries with hot climatic conditions, people have constantly tended to dine the principal meal in the evening, after the temperature has dropped.

The map below created by @LoverOfGeography shows the usual time of eating dinner in Europe.

According to this map, dinner time varies significantly throughout Europe. The further south you go in Europe, the later you eat dinner. In Sweden, for example, lunchtime is usually from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m., while Spain’s dinner time can be from 9:30 – 10:30 p.m.

Therefore, waiters at some restaurants sometimes encounter some difficulties when serving customers. For example, Reddit user Earth-C137 points out that:

I used to work as a waiter in a restaurant in a tourist town on the coast of Spain (which catered to both Spaniards and northern Europeans). One of the things I hated the most was the fact that as soon as the last tables of Spaniards finished eating lunch, the first Nordics would come in for dinner, so there was absolutely no slow time from 11 AM to 12 PM-2 AM each day.