Grammar question:
もし食べに行きたかったら、行こう。[行きたい]
If/when you want to go out to eat, let’s go! [from when]
Why is the answer 行きたかったら, and not 行きたがったら if we are expressing their want and not ours?
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I think in this case we would actually use 行きたい instead of past tense, as the event hasn’t happened yet.
Besides that, ~たがる is mostly used when talking about someone in the third person. For instance, me and you are talking about “Mike” wanting to eat: なんかマイクさんが食べに行きたがるよ
To my knowledge, ~たがる isn’t used much to express someone’s desire when they’re in the conversation, but I could be wrong. Hope this helps!
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I think in this case we would actually use 行きたい instead of past tense, as the event hasn’t happened yet.
The main verb hasn’t happened yet either so it’s just the standard conditional usage of たら. There’s no way to use たら and have the verb/adjective not be in the past tense. Unless you’re saying that the sentence should be using たいなら or たければ or something.
But yeah, regarding the 2nd person vs 3rd person thing, there’s a good example in the もし lesson:
もしゲームを欲しがっても、買わない。
Even if (he) wanted a game, I won’t buy one (for him).
Like Delta said, in this 欲しがっても example we’re talking about someone unrelated to the conversation from our own outside perspective. The person in question could explicitly tell us that he wants a game or we could observe their behavior and deduce that they want a game, but either way, we won’t buy one for him.
In OP’s original example, the conditional statement isn’t being based from our perspective as a speaker, but rather, we’re inserting ourselves into the listener’s shoes/perspective so to speak. When the listener feels they want to eat, we’ll go. Since it’s a hypothetical and we’re not assuming that they will or won’t want to go to eat, it’s fine to just use たい.
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