Fergus Henderson, the inspiring chef (I share his love for offal) behind the famed St John Restaurant in London, once lamented in Adam Gopnik’s book,
To eat is to put food into the mouth, chew and swallow it, as in “he was eating a hot dog.” Dining, however, indicates a table in a restaurant or at home for an evening meal. Eating can be accomplished in your car, over your kitchen sink or while sulking in your bedroom. But dining requires a table and a greater personal investment in enjoying a meal, whether alone, with family or friends. It means that participants bring something to the table and that food is part of a larger ceremony, rather than just filling an empty stomach. No matter how your table is set, whether for one as in the film Amelie, or for a crowd, in all cases it is so much better than just eating.
A decade ago, The Nation’s Health Organization issued this report on the predilections of teens who did not dine regularly as part of a family. And later, in an issue of the Atlantic Magazine, an article revealed that: the average American
This video from the 1950s is cringingly comical in its artifice around the family dinner table, and it brought back a couple of memories from my adolescence. Dinners with our children certainly had arguments, tears, banishment to the bathroom (which one daughter loved), food experiments by yours truly which were rejected vehemently; and young guests who said later that coming over to our house was one of the rare times they sat at a table for a family meal. One of our daughters at my parents’ house used to almost finish her dinner, ask to be excused and very quietly retire to her grandfather’s closet to surreptitiously watch TV. (My parents never had a TV until we gave them one; it was kept in his closet and pulled out only for special occasions — or clandestine viewing). Her older sister covered for her by maintaining a conversation with her grandparents. Even though the family dinners of my childhood had some of the decorum revealed in this video, I remember the unholy glee I had in pushing my brother’s face into his plate of spaghetti, after my father had repeatedly admonished him to sit up straight. Now I think it’s neat at our house when children go under the table and create imaginary worlds when they are bored with topside adult conversation. But they always come up for dessert.
After owning one of the best cooking stores in the US for 47 years, Nancy Pollard writes a blog about food in all its aspects – recipes, film, books, travel, superior sources and food related issues.
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Oh, Nancy, this was fabulous! The music, the tone, the set! Between the film and your blog, so many memories! I grew up amidst antiques, so our dining room did not look like the film, but my in-laws' did. We were a family that always ate together. Although I did not push my sister's face in the spaghetti, she did draw an invisible line - the demilitarized zone - between our places that I was not to cross. The DMZ could change nightly or even throughout the course of a meal. Nothing makes me happier than that first moment when friends, family, or both sit down at my "King Arthur's Round Table" in anticipation of good food and good conversation. (Zoom does not cut it.) And for the record, I set the table and did the dishes Wednesday and Saturday nights. My parents divided everything up evenly, including cake slices, with Solomonic wisdom.
Gretchen, your memories of your sister and the DMZ at the table brought back some of the same DMZ rules with one of my brothers, when we had to share a bed in a hotel. A line was drawn, my foot could not (nor could his) cross that line!
Nancy
I was raised in England and we always had to set the table properly. Cloth napkins and a cruet and water glasses. We also had a large pitcher of water. We never ate our food with our hands and also had dessert forks for cake. We even had fish knives and forks. No plastic plates or glasses. When I came to America people were amazed at how formal I was and still am even after almost six decades. I still use handkerchiefs and never Kleenex unless I have a bad cold.
Hello Helen,
Both you and I have no regrets! I resented it at the time, but even now I use cloth napkins (and wash them regularly!) because that is what we had as children.
Nancy
Family dinners were a nightly occurrence and a time to catch up and share what had happened that day (for context, I grew up in the 50s and 60s). Some of my favorite memories of childhood are the celebratory dinners for holidays, birthdays, etc. when the table's nominal seating of 12 often expanded to squeeze in a few more, with Mom's terrific cooking, conversations, and lots of laughter. We often had "orphans", who couldn't travel home for the holidays or found themselves alone for one reason or another - there was always room for one or two more at the table. For those celebratory events, happy hour preceded dinner, of course, and mostly in the kitchen. My Mom would be sitting at the kitchen table making clover leaf dinner rolls (for the second rise) and Dad would be mixing drinks in the kitchen with lots of joke telling. Until each of us turned 18, my sisters and I would get the "high sign" to leave the kitchen for the "adult jokes" to be told.
Francine,
I am happy that you posted this! I think that the effort of eating together around a table has been lost to so many in the US.
Nancy