“How we behave in restaurants doesn’t just tell us who we are, it tells us who we’re trying to be,” says ‘At The Table’ author Claire Powell, who reflects on her memories of meals out.
Restaurants became a bigger part of my life when I turned 18 and my parents separated. My dad – whose cooking repertoire consisted solely of Sunday roast, full English and kedgeree – moved into a sparsely furnished flat with a tiny galley kitchen. But he worked in the West End, and restaurants had been ingrained in his life since I was born, frequently enjoying leisurely lunches, returning home with the hot reek of booze.
Though our first trip to a restaurant felt strangely incongruous – the intensity of sitting opposite someone I both knew and didn’t know – it soon became a ritual, something I looked forward to whenever home from university. In these restaurants I discovered a new side to my dad, a side I hadn’t had access to before. The warm greetings from waiting staff where he was a regular. The humorous anecdotes about his life growing up.
I drank wine at these lunches – a glass or two with my hamburger and fries – but it wasn’t until I left uni that I really began following in my dad’s footsteps and developing the taste for daytime drinking. Employed as a copywriter by a tiny marketing agency in Soho, I soon learnt the meaning of the old-school working lunch.
That’s the thing about restaurants: there’s almost always some kind of power dynamic, no matter who you’re with. It’s the tension between the friend who only glances at the bill, and the one who nervously eyes each item. It’s the tightrope of chivalry when on a first date, and the unsaid rules after someone’s treated you.
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