BREAKFAST is a latte and a Danish pastry. For lunch, a bowl of salad eaten at your desk. There’s nothing in your fridge when you get home, so you go out for a curry. And for that big Sunday lunch with your family? Time to try out the new gastropub that’s just opened up the road.

If this is your life, you are not alone. New figures show that spending on eating out has overtaken spending on meals at home for the first time as Britons earn more money, but have less free time and ever- smaller kitchens.

With consumers increasingly adventurous in their eating habits — or more lazy when it comes to cooking — restaurant bills have soared.

The Office for National Statistics said that consumers spent £87.5 billion in 2004 on food and drink in restaurants, pubs and takeaway meals, double the figure spent in 1992.

Over the same period, food sales have grown at half the rate, reaching £85.8 billion in 2004, the most recent year for which figures were available.

Restaurateurs said the figures indicated a revolution in the nation’s eating habits.

Gordon Ramsay, the celebrity chef, said: “From a chef’s point of view, it’s a dream come true. As a nation we can now match ourselves for quality against France, Italy, Spain and even New York.

“We’re in an amazing time in the restaurant world. The cross-section of ethnic cuisine is extraordinary.”

Britain’s restaurants had undergone a radical change in recent years, he said. “It’s no longer little temples of whispering, it’s energetic, boisterous fun.”

Helena Spicer, of Mintel, the research group, said that 96 per cent of the population — in effect everyone capable of doing so — now ate out at least occasionally.

“Even if people can’t afford to eat at the most expensive places, they will still eat out quite frequently in sectors that suit them,” she said, adding that some chose pubs and restaurants because of their increasingly hectic lifestyles.

But lack of free time was not the only reason. A survey by Mintel indicates that 47 per cent of Britons claim to “really enjoy cooking”, and only about a sixth claim to lack the time to cook. She said that many consumers were dining out more “due to an interest in cuisine in general”.

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