At the Table
Our most important place.
How many tables will a person dine at in their lifetime? Thousands? Tens of thousands? All those moments we experience while sitting there. The stories and news we share. The cries, debates, laughs, decisions, grand plans. You can fall in and out of love across a table. You can make love on top.
I’d argue, the table is the most culturally significant place we’ve got. Not the pyramids or Petra or the Taj Mahal. A simple table.
Contrary to photos hawked by foodie influencers, the food doesn’t have to look or taste good for a dining experience to be meaningful — the food is the side piece (don’t tell chef). Why are we obsessed with taking pictures of perfectly presented food? A table in flux, disheveled and spent, is the real beauty.
Red wine splattering white linen like ink blots on a page, a story in the making. Voices leaping on top of one another. Whispers down the end. Legs jumbled beneath — intentional and not. Cutlery crossed indecently. Bread crumbs scattered like tea leaves. Soiled napkins. Lipstick on glasses. Plates smeared with sauces and oils and flaky things.
A perfect presentation, that “before”, doesn’t interest me so much. Okay okay, yes, I’ve succumbed to taking pictures pre-bites. But it’s the during and after that feel like art, the real heart and soul of a dining experience, the human touch, an anthropologist’s wet dream.
As we come off a year tangled with tables and good company, I wish you a 2025 filled with more beauty around the table.
And I’ll leave you with this quote from Anthony Bourdain:
“Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself.”
Some Restaurant Tables I’ve Enjoyed in Vancouver This Year…
