The girls’ trip was perfect: Samantha Stobo and her best friend spent two weeks in Italy drinking wine, suntanning, driving a convertible down the coast of Puglia. But there was one part of la dolce vita the 32-year-old never warmed up to: long, late, lazy dinners that rarely began before 8pm and stretched well past 10.

“I am such an early eater,” Stobo said. Back home in Miami, her “ideal dinner time” is 5.30; she simply “can’t wait” much later.

Stobo, who works in hotel marketing, does not care if that makes her sound uncool or uptight; she thinks a 5pm dinnertime is healthier. “That’s the normal time people used to eat dinner when we, like, lived by the sun and the moon and the way of the world,” she said. An idyllic way to put it – but studies do show that eating two hours or less before bedtime can disrupt our circadian rhythm and be a risk factor for obesity.

Thought to be the stuff of early bird specials and old folks’ homes, the five o’clock dinnertime could be one of 2025’s most surprising comebacks, as younger generations seem willing to finish meals before the sun goes down. According to data collected by the reservation app OpenTable, 53% of gen Z and 51% of millennials in the US are interested in snagging an early seat. OpenTable also found that 5pm dining was up 11% from January to August 2025, compared with 2024; 6pm, the most popular time to eat, was up 8%, while 8pm was up only 4%. In New York – now, apparently, a sleepy city? – 5pm dining was up 20%.

The reservation app OpenTable found that 5pm dining was up 11% from January to August 2025, compared with 2024. Photograph: Maskot/Getty Images

“Our data points to a clear trend in earlier dinner reservations this year, which could be influenced by factors like return to office, shifting health and wellness priorities, and/or strategically booking in-demand tables at historically quieter times,” Cheryl Paniagua, vice-president of restaurant sales and services at OpenTable, said in a statement.

Young people are drinking less and working out more; 73% of gen Zers have gym memberships, according to a 2024 report. Why stay out late when you have to rise and grind the next morning? Then there’s the issue of making reservations, which has become a bit of a bloodsport. Reservation scalpers are known to gobble up prime tables as soon as they become available, then sell them to the highest bidder. Want to eat at that TikTok-famous bistro or celebrity-favored Italian joint? Hope you’re hungry at 4.30pm.

Late-evening reservations conjure images of European cities, bottles of wine consumed slowly among friends and Anthony Bourdain in a leather jacket. Spaniards eat the latest, usually around 10pm, followed by Italians (9pm), the French (8pm), Germans (7pm), and Swedes, who are prompt 6pm diners.

According to a recent Yahoo/YouGov survey of 1,690 US adults, most (34%) liked to eat dinner at 6pm, 21% said they enjoyed it at 5pm, and only 14% said they sat down for the meal after 8pm. A 9pm dinner is nice if it is enjoyed with friends, but a late dinner alone, at home, perhaps involving a TV tray and Sex and the City reruns? Slightly sad. (Apologies to the late Mr Bourdain.)

Dinner is a really good example of how our cultural norms and rituals aren’t set in stone

Julia C Skinner

Stobo recently shared her penchant for early dinner on TikTok, in a clip liked more than 61,000 times. “Dinner by 6, in bed by 9,” she captioned a video showing her munching at her kitchen table, basking in late-afternoon light. Many viewers agreed. “Around 5:30-6 anything after that I’m copping an attitude,” one wrote. “5:30 is goated,” commented another.

Julia C Skinner, a food writer and historian, believes that earlier dinner times reflect America’s post-Covid work-from-home attitudes. If people are not commuting, they can theoretically eat as soon as they close their laptops at 5pm on the dot. “It makes it easier for us to eat whenever we want,” she said. “My last office job, I commuted two hours each way. That obviously impacted my dinnertime. Now, I work remotely, so I can get off work and be like, ‘great, right to dinner’.”

Dinner did not always exist. According to Eater, households ate in shifts until the 1700s. When families first started to gather, midday meals were considered the most important. “Dinner is a really good example of how our cultural norms and rituals aren’t set in stone,” Skinner said. “Breakfast used to be a huge meal, because we used to work on farms and needed the energy. Now, most people don’t eat a full steak and eggs for breakfast. Times change.”

Early dinner evangelists are not that different from happy hour regulars. Chris Syed, a managing partner of New York’s Highwater Rooftop, says his bar has recently become overrun with young people showing up right at 5pm to eat. “They’re able to take advantage of happy hour specials, so dinner is cheaper for them, and they’re only out from five to 7pm,” Syed said. “Then they can be in bed by eight watching Netflix.”

Syed, 46, still feels the call of the 8pm reservation, but he has noticed that time looks more like senior hours than peak rush. “There is a big difference between the 8 o’clock crowd and the five o’clock crowd,” he said. “[Five o’clock] is so young.” He can imagine his bar staging a “reverse happy hour” later in the night to counter the early onslaught.

“I can’t feed 200 people at the happy hour price,” Syed said. “You’re going to start to see a lot of [restaurant industry] folks trying to get more strategic, because we still have to cover our costs. Eventually, it’s going to take a toll.”

Giovanni Luciano, 24, a line cook who works at a Brooklyn bistro, eats dinner at 5pm, not necessarily by choice. That’s just when he’s served family dinner, a staff meal eaten before peak hours. He usually finds himself needing a second dinner after his shift.

Luciano, who is something of a sleaze-chic influencer (you may know him as “the Bushwick line cook”) and starred in an Addison Rae music video this summer, knows he is an anomaly. Among his cohort of TikTok glitterati, “people just want to eat dinner and get it over with” then go on to their next event or party. Sometimes, he will peek outside the kitchen and see a “long, full line of people waiting to be seated right at 6pm”.

To each their own, though Luciano believes that it diminishes dinner when you hustle things along. “Meals should be an event,” he said. “I like a candle with my dinner, baby. I want it to be dark.”