Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Garak
9. He Will Eat You. Or He Will F*ck You.
In Past Prologue, that famous lunch scene - the very first one - occurs between Garak and Dr. Bashir. There is little to no ambiguity here - Garak is out for lunch, and he's not particularly fussed about what he gets to eat.
This was a choice by Andrew Robinson. He said that in this earliest appearance, he wanted to portray the character without any defined sexuality. He wanted to display a character with a sexual appetite that could be appeased by an attractive human - and the fact that this human was male made no difference.
While, according to Robinson, he was supported in the idea that Garak would have a certain charismatic, dangerous charm to him, the writers didn't want to go down the sexually opaque route. There were a couple of reasons for this. First, he said, it was because the show was Star Trek. There wasn't truly room to explore this aspect of the character. Another reason was that he was hindered by the writers. Though he would have enjoyed keeping Garak sexually open in this way, the writing wouldn't support it, which meant he couldn't either.