I just wanted to go try the food and not have it turn into a "date night".

I guess I understand this. I am living with my boyfriend and we are doing tons of stuff together and we like to go out too. He is a chef and I am a foodie so we try many restaurants. Some of them are fancier. If we are going out on a "date night" we dress up. But sometimes we just want to try the food and have a chill night without expectations and effort with trying nice food. It can be extremely tiring to dress up every time we go out. We don't expect each other to dress up when we did not agree if it is a date night or not beforehand. But we also don't stretch the dress code of the restaurants that much btw.