Everyone knows the best part of any first date is slopping up a plate of meaty tacos. But eating them in front of a romantic prospect is a high-stakes game of etiquette versus hunger. Obviously, not eating tacos isn’t an option, so here’s some helpful ways to hide your undignified devouring.

Ask the restaurant to serve your tacos on the floor. If your date questions why you keep disappearing under the table, periodically emerging between bites with a reassuring “Mm-hmm” to show you’re still listening, explain you’re inspecting the floor’s grout work.

Create a menu fort. Your date will find this behavior endearing, perhaps even admiring your childlike sense of play. But as they inquire about how many siblings you have and where you went to school, you’ll be nestled safely inside your laminated citadel with pico de queso dripping freely from your chin.

Take a “Nap.” After the food arrives, pretend to be really tired and put your head on the table, then take covert bites of taco while you’re “sleeping.” To believably pull this off, you need to start yawning a bunch and loudly exclaim “boy, I’m beat” at least an hour before the food arrives.

Distract your date with some slight of hand magic. Your date will be too busy trying to figure out how you stuck a quarter behind their eye and stuffed a live dove up your sleeve to pay any attention to what that mouth’s doing.

“I just remembered I’m from Europe” excuse. Explain that in your very specific part of Europe (doesn’t matter where, make something up!) It's considered rude to open your eyes during a meal. Your date gets to feel worldly as they respect your made up heritage, and you get to slime it up like a disgusting Euro-hog.

Pretend this is your first time you’ve ever seen food in person. Sure, you’ve seen it on TV and in movies, but never in real life. Your date will likely respect your faux-inexperience, choosing not to correct you each time you mispronounce “food” and allowing you to eat as messily as the taco gods intended.

Adorn a Victorian mourning veil and equine feedbag as a tribute to your recently deceased horse. The feedbag can be thoroughly stuffed with tacos while still hiding your shameful chimpian eating habits, and the mourning veil will excuse any margarita-inspired boorish behavior you might partake in.

Don’t hide at all. Look your date in the eyes, unhinge your jaw like a cilantro loving alpha snake, and take that bite. Let the cheese fall where it may. If they flinch, they’re not the one. But if they keep eating like nothing happened, marry them. Immediately. Possibly in the parking lot.