The flip-side to this question about being asked one's opinion on food they didn't like;
What things should you keep in mind if you have cooked or are cooking a meal for family or friends, and would like their honest opinion of it, for future or immediate reference?
For a number of reasons that generally boil down to politeness, most adults seem reluctant to express their true feelings about food they've been served - the only metric I can often get is if they enthusiastically tell me how good it was, then they probably enjoyed it, and if they say nothing, or only complement the smell, or the decor, or how well the napkins are folded, then they probably didn't. In that latter case though, I still don't know what they didn't like, or what I should do better in the future.
I'd really like to minimize the mutual-loss where I take time to cook for someone, and they force themselves to pretend to enjoy it. Especially important would be requesting honest feedback if I'm not done cooking yet, when changes could still be made.
The main sets of circumstances that I think would require different methods/responses:
- People for whom you cook often/regularly, versus people you don't see often
- People who can cook things they themselves like, versus people who, while they know when something doesn't taste good to them, don't really know how it could/should be improved