Choosing a restaurant for a group: allergies, distance and the person who always says "anything"

"Where should we eat?" sounds like one question. It is three, and groups get into trouble because they try to answer them all at once, in a chat, with the loudest person going first.

Take them in order — constraints, then the practical side, then taste — and the choice mostly makes itself.

First: what nobody can eat

This one is not a preference and should never be treated like one. A nut allergy, a vegetarian in the group, someone who keeps kosher or halal, a gluten intolerance — each of these removes some restaurants from the list entirely, and no amount of enthusiasm from everyone else puts them back.

The mistake groups make is letting this surface late. Someone suggests the Thai place, four people say yes, and then the fifth person mentions the peanut thing. Now the group has to un-decide, which is far more awkward than never deciding in the first place.

Ask this question first, privately, and treat every answer as absolute. In a Compromise restaurant room it is asked as a need rather than a list of ingredients — "Any dietary needs?": vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, halal, kosher, lactose-free, nut-free. It is a dealbreaker: a need that a place is known not to cater for removes that place from the ranking, and the result lists it separately with the reason. Sam needs vegetarian, and this place doesn't cater for it. Nobody has to say it in the chat.

A place nobody knows about is not removed. "We don't know whether the Thai place does halal" is not the same as "it doesn't", and treating it as a no would throw out good options on a guess. The room simply doesn't judge that place on that need.

Second: what kind of meal, and how far

Next comes the practical side, and it is softer than the first. Two quick questions cover it: what kind of meal this is — a quick bite, a casual dinner, a celebration — and how far people are willing to go for it.

Pick several kinds of meal, or none: an empty answer means "anything", and the scoring simply leaves it alone. Distance is a slope, not a wall. Five minutes past someone's limit is a mild problem; forty is a real one. So a place inside everyone's limit gets full marks, one just past someone's limit loses a little, and one far past it loses a lot. It is never removed the way an allergy removes a place — the person can always decide it's worth the trip this once — but the group sees two of six wanted somewhere closer and can weigh that.

Money is best settled by the list itself. If someone is on a tight month, leave the tasting menu off it: nobody should have to say so out loud to be heard.

Third: what everyone would enjoy

Only now does taste come in — and it is the least important of the three, which is the opposite of how a chat treats it. Most people are flexible about it.

Then rate each place on a one-to-five scale. That is the question that catches everything else, cuisine included: the place with the bad service, the Italian place when you had Italian yesterday, the one you went to last week.

The person who always says "anything"

Every group has one. They are not being difficult; they are being polite, and in a chat politeness gets them the restaurant nobody else wanted either.

Structured, private questions fix this almost by accident. "Anything" is a fine answer to the kind-of-meal question, and it costs nothing — it neither helps nor hurts any option. But the same person will happily rate five restaurants on a scale, and will happily say what they can't eat, and those answers are the ones that matter. The room gives them a way to contribute without having to argue for anything.

What the result looks like

After everyone has answered, the room ranks what's left and explains:

• Right for what everyone has in mind
• Close enough for everyone
• Five of six are happy with this one
• Anna wanted somewhere closer
• Ruled out: The Grill House — Sam needs vegetarian, and this place doesn't cater for it

That last line is doing a lot of work. The group can see that the grill was popular, can see exactly why it is off the table, and can move on. Nobody has to defend their allergy, and nobody is quietly wondering whether they could have pushed for their favourite.

A note on the list itself

Four to six candidates is right. Put real places on it — a name, how long it takes to get there, what it's good for, and what you know about the diets it caters for and the ones it doesn't. A menu or a map usually answers that in a minute. What you tag is what lets the veto, the kind-of-meal and the distance questions do their job; what you leave blank is simply not judged, so tag what you know and skip what you don't.

Then send the link. Everyone answers on their phone, alone, in about a minute, and dinner is decided before the chat has finished arguing about it.