It’s late at night. You’ve had a long day at work and school, but you still need to eat. You don’t have the energy to cook. You don’t have enough ingredients to make a real meal. What do you decide to eat instead?
Girl dinner.
Girl dinner is a TikTok phenomenon where girls film the odd food concoctions they’ve created for their dinners. The possibilities are endless for girl dinner creations. From granola bars and cheese to ramen and wine, anything lying around your house can become part of a girl dinner.
We decided to ask our readers what their go-to girl dinners are and try them for ourselves.
Here’s what we would and would not eat again.
For clarity, italics indicates that Will is speaking.
Sushi
We started our girl dinner journey off with something classic: sushi.
I’m not really sure if this qualifies as girl dinner? Sushi is expensive and enjoyed by millions of people at high-end sushi restaurants and cats in alleys behind high-end sushi restaurants. But I am neither a girl nor a dinner. What do I know?
I am a man, so I like sports and football and dirt and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.”
And I am a woman, so I like shopping and makeup and flowers and Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.”
But I actually do not like sushi, and I knew that Will picked this option to try because 1) he loves sushi and 2) he hates me.
This was not my least favorite girl dinner, but it wasn’t the best. I ate one piece of a crunchy roll and stopped.
This was easily my favorite girl dinner. Sushi is good. What do you want from me? Was it supposed to taste different because I said “girl dinner” to myself before eating it? It’s good.
I got something called a Madonna roll from the restaurant we ordered from because that seemed girl power-ey. Is girl dinner empowering? Much to consider.
9/10
Texas toast, a Gatorade and a Pop Tart
This is not a meal, but, like, it’s good. I like all three of these things. Having them together shouldn’t change that. I do think this dinner is about one gram of protein to 60 grams of carbs though.
We each had a glacier cherry Gatorade and a s’mores Pop Tart alongside our pieces of Texas toast.
I also took two gummy vitamins for my hair with it. It seemed like a girly thing to do.
Will stole my hair vitamins after I said I needed to take them. At least it’s recommended that you take them with food, so girl dinner really helped out there.
The vitamins were good, but a Flintstone gummy would’ve been better. (I strongly disagree with this.)
6/10
Pepperoni and saltines
This is also not a meal. We really didn’t enjoy this that much.
I don’t usually eat just raw pepperoni without it being on a pizza or in a calzone. Also the crackers were stale, which I think is a metaphor for something, though I’m not sure what.
The metaphor is that these were the only crackers I had in my pantry.
We would not recommend this girl dinner.
2/10
Two bubble teas and a popsicle
Again, this is not a meal.
I was really excited about this girl dinner because I love boba. There are so many people I’ve introduced to boba, and I’ve tried almost every place that sells it in Baton Rouge. Will is probably the only person I’ve taken to a bubble tea place who doesn’t like it.
I don’t like tea and I also don’t like boba. I like the texture of it because it’s fun to chew, like gum you can swallow, but I didn’t like the tapioca flavor.
I got a strawberry green tea with tapioca and Will tried a mango green tea with tapioca. We also tried ICEE-flavored popsicles to go with the teas.
The popsicle was good, but it gave me the worst brain freeze of my life because I eat food at the same speed of a starved dog who is also stupid.
4/10
The Popeyes girl dinner
After the term “girl dinner” started going viral, Popeyes responded by creating a tab on its app where users can have their own girl dinner of just Popeyes’ side items.
You can order its homestyle mac and cheese, Cajun fries, mashed potatoes, red beans and rice, coleslaw and biscuits.
Will and I decided to order everything except the coleslaw and red beans and rice.
This is the closest we’ve come to a meal since the sushi. It’s Popeyes, so it’s good.
I would have liked to get chicken along with the sides, but I am beginning to feel like having a protein source with your meal changes it from a girl dinner to just a regular dinner.
7/10
Honorable mentions
We received several responses to our Instagram story asking for girl dinner suggestions, but could not try them all.
Someone said that their go-to girl dinner was watching Joe Burrow TikToks (which Will likes because he is a man and he loves sports. I liked this because have you seen Joe Burrow?).
Another reader said theirs was just Diet Coke (mildly concerning).
Our favorite response was “12 metric tons of topsoil.” Will really wanted to try this one, but I think that would have been a more appropriate boy dinner meal.
