I grew up with it here in Memphis. We “said the blessing” every meal I spent with my grandparents, with an extra long one on holidays when extended family came for supper. I’m Southern, but not Baptist. United Methodists did too back then, but it’s been years since I saw anyone praying before a meal out in restaurants.
Of course I don’t get out much.
My Southern Baptist grandma says grace in restaurants. Sometimes aloud, sometimes she just bows her head and closes her eyes. Sometimes she wants us all to hold hands. However, I don’t think it’s very conspicuous.
My Catholic aunt, uncle, and cousins do it before meals. I’m an atheist and I don’t really like it, so I don’t participate in the prayers.
I’ve certainly seen it often, but I wouldn’t call it common. At people’s homes, very common.
We pray before every meal, including in restaurants.
Lifelong Lutheran, upper Midwest USA.
Regards,
Shodan
My (Ukrainian Catholic) in-laws pray before every meal, in public or not.
Edit: Toronto, Canada
This.
I grew up in a predominately Southern Baptist part of NC and people saying grace before restaurant meals was common there. However, in public, it was typically a reserved activity. In small gatherings/families, all individuals would bow their heads for a short, silent prayer or, less commonly, one person would say a quick (20 seconds or less), soft prayer for all. It’s easy to miss for diners around them engaged in their own conversations or eating.
The loud, long, passionate prayers were saved for nonpublic family and church gatherings.
I see it fairly frequently, but never in more upscale restaurants. I have no idea what denomination the praying folk are, but some are probably Baptist, some Southern Baptist, Old Regular Baptist, Holiness Pentecostal, Apostolic, etc. We’ve got lots of public prayer denominations here.
I say Grace before every meal at home, but I’ve never said a prayer before eating in public, ever!
Catholic in Kentucky,
Ellen
I don’t know why you specify Southern Baptists (or Baptists at all). My family is Episcopalian - a pretty liberal denomination - and we say grace before meals, including at restaurants.
My son started kindergarten last week and told us (without any prompting) that he says grace before he eats his lunch in the cafeteria.
Praying at restaurants happens frequently here in South Georgia.
There are plenty of denominations other than Southern Baptists that do so.
When we meet my wife’s two sisters and their families for dinner in Western Pennsylvania, their inner Grace Brethrens will come out and the hubbies will have to say grace before the meal. In restaurant or not. When it’s just my MIL, she just digs in with us, even though she’s also a churchgoer.
We shut up and listen out of respect, and we can certainly use a good word from the devout, but our own splinter group of this family has gone from Brethren to Baptist to Lutheran to agnostic/lapsed in a span of about 15 years.
**
Raised a liberal Southern Baptist. My family(not me) prays before eating, whether at home or out. I work with a non-practising Catholic, who prays before eating his lunch at work.
**Q. Why don’t Southern Baptists believe in pre-marital sex?
A. Because it might lead to dancing. 
My folks are non-denominational fundamentalists and they pray before every meal in public. This is in east Texas, where I sometimes see it from others as well. I’ve no idea what they are, but agree with Ellen Cherry that I’ve never seen it at any place upscale.
I see it a lot here. As a matter of fact, at professional society lunch or dinner meetings here, someone is always called on to “say the blessing”.
My Daddy also always said grace for us at supper time when I was growing up. We’re Episcopalians.
I’ve lived in the South for years and currently dwell in Arkansas. On very, very rare occasion I see people pray at restaurants, at least in any kind of obvious way. I fellow grad student took me out to lunch once and said a quick prayer over her meal. Once and a while I’ll see some kind of church group say grace at some medium-quality eatery on Sunday morning. That’s about it. Interestingly, most (all?) the obvious public praying I see occurs in groups. For the record, the most prominent religious denominations in my area seem to be Baptists of various stripes and Pentecostals. Or at least that’s the way it is among people I know who actually talk to me about their religious beliefs.
Yeah, and sometimes it’s the goddamned mayor! (grumble, grumble)
My experience is that it has little to do with denomination. Here in the Bible belt, it’s about fifty-fifty. And a lot of people will do it when others are around, but not so much alone. For some, it’s more of an etiquette thing.
My family mostly doesn’t do it, except on special occasions. We always do it at Thanksgiving–and in fact do the round robin style. The prayer itself is more like thanking God for everything–i.e., the point of the holiday. All other occasions, it’s either a silent prayer, or a single leader. Most of those are not at restaurants.
One exception is if you are going out with a church group. I think it’s an identity thing there.
I really shouldnt have. In the end I was more interested in whether its more socially acceptable in America. There are orders of magnitude more Baptists there, and they seem most overt about their faith. I guess I zeroed in on them.
And indeed, it seems it is quite a bit more common.
Well, an individual saying grace will usually bow their head silently for 3-5 seconds – you probably wouldn’t even notice unless you were sitting with them and watching them at the time. Even when we pray as a family in public, it’s done in a hushed whisper to avoid drawing attention to ourselves. Give us grateful hearts, our Father, for all thy mercies, and make us mindful of the needs of others; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Having lived in Louisiana just about my whole life (excepting four years in Mississippi), I can tell you that a lot of people think the American South:
(a) is culturally monolithic – Texas is South Carolinia is Tennessee is Georgia, etc.
(b) is just plain weird. It really isn’t, but then … would I really know?