The Dinner Table Is Still Important

Have somewhere you always go back to.

THE JOURNAL · CULTURE

Words by A. Mercer

There is a restaurant I go to more often than I probably should. It isn't particularly fashionable. You don't need to know someone to get a table, there is no impossible reservation to secure, and I don't believe I've ever seen anyone photograph the bread before eating it. But I like it. More specifically, I've grown attached to it.

There is a table I prefer, tucked slightly away from the rest of the room—close enough to everything to feel part of the evening, but far enough away that you can actually have a conversation. They know what I drink. I know which waiter will quietly tell me that the special isn't particularly special tonight. I've celebrated good news there and had conversations there that weren't especially easy.

I've taken friends, family, people I wanted to know better and, on occasion, people I probably shouldn't have invited in the first place.

I've ordered another drink when I should have gone home. I've stayed until the staff began doing that very polite thing where they never actually ask you to leave, but the room around you slowly disappears. Somewhere along the way, it stopped being a restaurant I liked and became one of my places.

I think everyone should have a few of those. Not necessarily restaurants, either. Just places you return to often enough that eventually they begin to feel slightly yours. Lately, I've been wondering whether we have enough of them, because we have become very good at finding what's next.

The Pleasure of Going Back

I love discovering somewhere new. Give me a hotel I've never stayed in, a restaurant somebody insists I have to try, or a road I've never driven, and it won't take much convincing. There is still an enormous amount of the world I'd like to see. But somewhere in our enthusiasm for discovering everything, I wonder if we've forgotten the pleasure of going back.

Think about how we travel now. We keep lists. Restaurants saved on our phones, hotels bookmarked, towns somebody posted online that suddenly become places we absolutely must visit. We arrive, eat the thing, take the photograph and move on. There is nothing wrong with any of that, of course. But when I think about the places that mean the most to me, they aren't necessarily the most impressive places I've been. They're the ones I've visited enough times that I no longer need directions to get there.

Something changes when you return. You begin recognizing people, and then they begin recognizing you. Eventually someone remembers your name. The bartender knows your drink. The waiter knows where you'd rather sit. The hotel remembers which room you liked last time. You walk through the door and hear, “Good to see you again.”

It's such an ordinary sentence, but I think there is a small luxury hidden inside it. We spend a surprising amount of money trying to feel important. Maybe what we're actually looking for is the much simpler feeling of being known.

The Table

I've been thinking about this at home, too. If you asked me what the most important piece of furniture in a house is, I think I'd say the table. Not the expensive chair, not the beautiful desk, and certainly not the formal room that looks lovely but somehow makes everyone nervous about sitting down. The table.

An enormous amount of life happens around one. You eat breakfast there half awake. Someone opens a bottle of wine there. Friends come over for dinner and stay an hour longer than anyone expected. Children tell stories that seem completely insignificant at the time and, years later, you'd give almost anything to hear again. There are birthdays and arguments, apologies and celebrations. Someone spills something. Someone burns dinner. Someone brings out another bottle even though everyone has already agreed they shouldn't.

For a while, there might be a high chair pulled up at one end. Then one day there isn't. The table remains remarkably similar while everyone around it keeps changing. That's the part I don't think we appreciate enough while it's happening. Years from now, nobody is going to remember what you paid for the table. They're going to remember who sat there.

Maybe that's why I've never entirely understood saving the good things for later. The good plates, the dining room, the bottle you've been holding onto, the candles somebody gave you that apparently require a diplomatic summit before the occasion is important enough to light them. Use them. Tuesday is an occasion. Your family being home is an occasion. A friend stopping by is an occasion.

Put some music on. Open the wine. Cook something—or order something if you can't cook. Invite people over. If the table gets scratched, good. It means somebody used it. A house shouldn't be a museum dedicated to all the things you've managed to acquire. It should be the setting for your life.

| “A rich life isn't only about discovering new places. It's about returning to the good ones often enough that they become part of your story.” |

— A. Mercer

The Art of Having People Over

I've also come to appreciate people who know how to host. Not entertain. Host. There is a difference.

Entertainment can become a performance. Hosting is simply making people feel as though you're genuinely pleased they're there. Some of the best dinners I've attended were objectively unimpressive. The food was simple. Nobody knew where the correct fork was supposed to go. The wine wasn't particularly expensive. But nobody was checking the time, and that's usually the sign of a good evening.

A good host pours the drink, takes the coat, introduces the person who doesn't know anyone and makes sure the quiet person isn't stranded at the end of the table. Then, crucially, he sits down. Nobody wants to watch you spend the entire evening performing an elaborate one-man restaurant service from your own kitchen. The point isn't to prove that you're an excellent host. The point is to create the sort of evening people aren't particularly eager to leave.

Which brings me to something I'm admittedly still working on: the phone.

I'm as guilty of this as anyone. An email comes through. Something at work suddenly feels urgent. You convince yourself you're only going to check one thing, and then somebody is halfway through telling you a story while you're technically sitting across from them but mentally somewhere else entirely. Most things can wait through dinner. I've learned this despite repeatedly behaving as though Western civilization may collapse if I don't answer an email before dessert. It usually survives.

The phone doesn't need to sit face down beside your plate either. Put it somewhere else. Let someone finish the story. Ask them another question. Be where you are. There are fewer and fewer parts of life where several people voluntarily agree to sit in one place and give one another their attention. I think the dinner table is worth protecting.

Order Another Coffee

There is a moment near the end of a good dinner that I particularly like. The plates are gone, the restaurant has become quieter, and someone looks at the time and says something like, “We should probably get going.” Everybody knows they're right, but nobody moves.

So you order another coffee. Maybe another drink. Someone remembers a story, the conversation wanders somewhere completely unexpected, and suddenly another forty-five minutes have disappeared. Those are often the best forty-five minutes of the evening.

We spend so much of our lives trying to make things more efficient. We want faster travel, faster service, shorter meetings, quicker answers. I understand the appeal. I don't particularly enjoy wasting time either. But dinner doesn't always need improving. Sometimes the inefficient part is the point. Stay a little longer.

Have Somewhere You Always Go Back To

The same is true of places. Go back.

Have a barber who knows how you like your hair. Find a coffee shop where somebody recognizes you. Have a restaurant where you know what you're ordering before you open the menu. Go back to the same town. Stay at the same hotel. Rent the same house one summer and, if everyone loved it, rent it again.

Not every holiday needs to become an expedition into undiscovered territory. Not every experience needs to be new to be worthwhile. In fact, repetition does something novelty can't: it creates tradition without anybody deliberately deciding to create one.

The first year, you visit. The second year, you return. By the fifth year, it's simply what you do.

If you have children, something else begins happening. They recognize the road. They know the exit. They remember where the ice cream shop is. They know which restaurant you're going to on the first night. They argue over the same bedroom. The place slowly becomes part of their childhood.

Then, if you're lucky, many years later they'll return without you and say, “We always used to come here.”

I don't know why, but I find that sentence enormously moving. Maybe because that's what we're really doing when we return somewhere often enough. We're leaving little markers throughout our lives. This is where we had breakfast. This is where Dad always sat. This is the restaurant Mum loved. This is where we came every summer. This is where he proposed. This is where we celebrated. This is where we always ordered too much dessert.

The place begins holding onto the memories for us.

A Rich Life Needs Repetition

I used to think living richly meant seeing as much as possible. In some ways, I still do. I want unfamiliar streets, new restaurants, long drives and hotel rooms where I have absolutely no idea how to operate the lights.

But I'm beginning to think a rich life needs repetition too.

The same table. The same friends. The same restaurant. The same summer town. The same ridiculous story you've all heard twenty times. The same traditions nobody remembers starting.

There is comfort in that, but I think it's more than comfort. There is belonging.

Novelty gives us stories. Familiarity gives those stories somewhere to live.

Maybe that's why the dinner table still matters. It was never really about dinner. It's simply one of the places we keep coming back to. When something good happens, we gather around one. When someone comes home, we gather around one. Birthdays, holidays, first dates, anniversaries, business ideas, reunions and goodbyes—we sit down, someone pours something, someone passes something, and we talk. For a little while, nobody goes anywhere.

There are faster ways to eat now. Faster ways to communicate. Faster ways to meet people. Faster ways to move through almost everything.

I'm not convinced they're all better.

The Standard

So have a table people know they're welcome at. Have a restaurant where someone knows your name. Have a town whose streets eventually become familiar. Have a hotel where you know which room you'd like. Have a holiday tradition nobody is particularly interested in changing.

Find somewhere good, and then resist the temptation to constantly search for somewhere better.

Go back. Become a regular. Stay for another drink. Order another coffee. Take your children. Take them again next year. And maybe, if you're fortunate, one day they'll take theirs.

Because I don't think a well-lived life is measured only by all the places you've been.

I think it's also measured by the places that remember you.

Have somewhere you always go back to.

Until next time,

A. Mercer

Keeper of the Standard

FORM & CHARACTER

The Art of Living Well.