You think that a good restaurant determines the quality of a meal, but in fact, whether a meal is enjoyable often depends on whether you're savoring the food or managing relationships. When dining with someone you know well, you don't need to control your expressions, maintain topics, guess what the other person is thinking, or constantly pay attention to your words and actions. The social cost is almost zero, so your attention can be fully focused on the food itself. The dishes arrive as dishes, the aroma is aroma, hunger is hunger, and satisfaction is satisfaction.

And when dining with someone you don't know well, even if you go to a top-notch restaurant, the act of eating will be overshadowed by another matter: social interaction. While eating, you think about what to say, how to respond, whether the atmosphere is awkward, and how the other person perceives you. The food becomes a background, and the real energy drain is the interaction and relationship.
At this point, the more upscale the restaurant, the more it resembles a social scene rather than a scene for enjoying food.