The Viral 'My Girlfriend Isn't Hungry' Menu Option Is Dumb

In early May, a restaurant called Mama D's quietly opened in a North Little Rock, Arkansas neighborhood, near a gas station, a U-Haul rental spot, and the unfortunately named Heavensgate hair salon. Its menu was exactly what you'd expect from a diner with checkerboard floors and red vinyl chairs: all-day steak and eggs, crinkle-cut fries, and fried pickles as both an appetizer and a side dish.

Mama D's might've stayed a hyper-local favorite, the kind of place where you could eat a double-cheeseburger called The Big Sexy without feeling obligated to Instagram it, until someone noticed the add-on that was printed at the bottom of the menu, right below the list of sides. The "My Girlfriend is Not Hungry" option has been on Mama D's menu since it opened, but it took several weeks to gain attention outside of Pulaski County. A race car driver named Nick Chisler posted a picture of that corner of the menu on Facebook, left his sharing settings on Public, and 20,000 shares later, here we are.

The $4.25 "My Girlfriend is Not Hungry" add-on is for customers who don't want to share their fried mozzarella sticks with their dinner companions or whatever, but who do want to order for them. The item's description reads "Add extra French fries to your entree, and fried chicken wings (2) or fried cheese sticks (3)." That's literally it. That's the premise, the setup, and the punchline in 17 economical words.

"I think everybody can relate, when we go out with our girlfriend or our wives who will be like 'I'm OK with salad' or 'I'm OK with this small thing or with a drink,'" Andrew Putra, the co-owner of Mama D's, told THV11. "But at the end, they'll be picking on your food. We can give them their options now, so people don't have to spend too much, but they can still get a small portion that they can eat." Interestingly, Putra doesn’t seem to consider that men might be mozzarella stick grifters, too.

We have a lot of questions for the women of North Little Rock, Arkansas, starting with "Why are you involved with someone who might be weirdly territorial about sharing his French fries?" And, beyond that, why do we all continue to buy into that eternally exhausted idea that women aren't supposed to be—or aren't expected to be—hungry enough to order an entire meal, or that we're collectively OK with denying ourselves the satisfaction of being fully satiated at a restaurant?

An actual menu item called "My Girlfriend is Not Hungry" might just make a ravenous woman lose her appetite. Irony: It’s delicious.