It’s not just politeness, it’s not just establishing the level of hospitality of the place: the choice of restaurants to bring bread immediately to the table is a marketing move driven by scientific evidence, namely that bread stimulates our frontal lobe, increases blood sugar levels and relaxes us, leading us to order more.When you sit down at a restaurant, the first thing waiters do is bring a bread basket, followed immediately by the drinks, which they ask for before you even choose your meal. It’s clear that this is immediately perceived as a sign of friendliness, a way to establish the establishment’s level of hospitality and, if the baked goods are homemade, also to showcase the kitchen’s skills. These are certainly all valid reasons, but they’re not the real reason why the bread basket appears almost immediately.

A famous American neuroscientist, Daniel Amen, explained it: according to him, this choice has a very specific function: to make you order more dishes. How is this possible? It seems that eating bread while you’re still choosing what to eat stimulates the brain’s frontal lobe, triggering a sugar spike that increases the desire to order more.In a video posted on neurolab_’s TikTok profile, which has racked up nearly two million views, Amen explains why bread triggers this effect in us and how it’s not just bread, but also wine, that stimulates us: “When you go to a restaurant, the first thing they do is bring bread to the table and ask you if you want alcohol, because both act on the frontal lobe. And both make you more likely to order more and spend more money at the restaurant.”