Really Dining Out

Eating well is living well

“Since moving back to the States, what have you missed most about being an expat?”

It was a direct question, but that’s the way David is. We sat in his plunge pool, drinking vodka cranberries as the wind tossed around the tops of a little forest of bluegum trees next to the cottage. In the distance, we could see the sun begin to set behind the beautiful Klein River Valley mountains. It was the golden hour along the Whale Coast of South Africa, and I was regretting ever leaving Stanford Village.

The pool sat right off the back porch, where a fire was steadily working a pile of charcoal into a glowing furnace for the bowl of chicken David had marinated all night.

This Hollywood actor/director had left America years before to explore life outside the bubble. But, unlike me, David would stay on in our village in South Africa, while my family and I were deported back to America, courtesy of the anal-retentive adjudicators at the Ministry of Home Affairs.

“So, tell me,” he pressed. “What have you missed most?”

“Wow… let me think about this for two seconds,” I said. “Dining out. Really dining out.”

“I get you. I get you,” David responded.

He knew.

Really dining out is something few Americans ever experience anymore—and they don’t even realize what they’ve lost. To illustrate, I will describe the first “fine dining” experience my wife and I had upon our return to America after nearly eight years living abroad.

I booked our table in advance, because the restaurant in question was one of the most popular venues in several counties. As is our custom, we put on our finest and arrived a bit early for some pre-dinner drinks. We found our table already prepared, as it was early in the evening, and we were promptly seated.

Within a minute, our waiter arrived at the table with glasses of water and menus. Two minutes later, he was back. I ordered our pre-dinner drinks, starters and mains, and our wine for the mains, and the waiter scurried off to inform the kitchen. Three minutes later, he was back with our cocktails and some bread for the table. My wife and I toasted—nervously—and began to sip.

Five minutes later, our appetizers arrived. “Wow. That was fast,” I remarked. It wasn’t a compliment. Not even halfway through our cocktails, we were starting on our appetizers. “What’s the bread for?” my wife whispered. Indeed, we had not even tried it when we were forced to start on our appetizers while they were still hot. The waiter then brought us our wine for dinner.

Around 10 minutes later, our mains arrived. Although our cocktail glasses were not yet empty, new glasses were placed on the table with our bottle of wine. We were now starting to understand. As the first diners that evening, it was probable that our “real estate” had already been re-sold a little later. So we were being ushered along to allow the establishment to flip our table as soon as possible.

We were determined to enjoy our mains, so we purposefully ate very slowly. We must have been interrupted at least five times by the waiter asking us if we needed anything, which is restaurant newspeak for “aren’t you done yet?” At length when we finally finished, our waiter rushed in to ask about dessert and coffee. We ordered and—surprise!—he was back within three minutes with our selections. I went ahead and asked for the bill to save him another trip. By this time, we were anxious to leave anyway.

I cannot recall anything we ate at this restaurant. All I can remember from the experience, which lasted a whole 1 hour and 15 minutes, was the indigestion both of us had afterwards from eating so quickly.

What happened to dining out in America? I was surprised that many restaurants don’t accept reservations anymore. Reservations are not necessary if dining-out traffic is generally heavy, and the dinner process has been highly systematized as though Henry Ford planned it himself. Tables are turned rapidly…sometimes up to three times during dinner. For this to happen, service must be fast—even if it’s not “fast food” being served. I am generally shocked by two things when I eat out in America: 1. enormous portion sizes, and 2. how quickly food is prepared.

For the big chain restaurants, it’s obvious that most food is prepared off-site and then nuked upon arrival. For more upscale restaurants preparing fresh food, you’ll still often end up eating for two, and be hurried out as soon as possible.

Contrast that to Graze “Slow Food” Restaurant in the village of Stanford, South Africa, where David and I lived. First of all, the restaurant was small—six or maybe eight tables max during winter months. Chef Tabby and her partner Alex opened only Friday nights for dinner. They were always full—so bookings were essential. Tables were rarely turned during the evening (unless guests left early and latecomers arrived), so if you didn’t have a spot already, you cooked at home!

When you arrived, you were seated and the table was your personal real estate until closing… which was a good thing, because it could take as long as 45 minutes before you were served the starters. But we didn’t care, because we were already quaffing glasses of MCC from local vineyards and munching on fresh focaccia with local pressed olive oil and Chef Tabby’s homemade balsamic reduction.

I won’t get too deep in a culinary description of dinner, but it’s was always a very limited selection of “farm to fork” and seasonal foods, much from Tabby and Alex’s own farm. My favorites were Tabby’s entrees made with her plump, juicy rabbits and root vegetables. Of course, the desserts were homemade and served with a local port. But the most important part of the evening was that it was an evening. We arrived at 6:30pm for drinks, dinner service began at 7, and we would often close the place at 10pm.

And this phenomena was not just at Graze. Down the road a mile or so was Havercrofts, where Chef Brydon and wife Innes fed you deviled lamb kidneys and chicken ballottine for three hours on a Sunday afternoon. I’ve enjoyed many lunches where Brydon and Innes came to sit with me and the wife after service to drink wine on the back patio until they ran out of cigarettes.

The demise of the dinner table at home has led to most Americans forgetting what a long dinner is like. The late, great author and female curmudgeon Barbara Holland addressed this in one of her essays. The dinner table was the place where people would engage in what Holland described as “recreational talking.” This was an old pleasure enjoyed by people before television, at-home movies, loud music, recreational drug use, smart phones, and other passive forms of entertainment.

What did people talk about at the table? Holland explains:

“What indeed. Sex and politics and civil rights, the best restaurants we’d ever eaten in, seven things to take to a desert island, how’d we go about faking a Jackson Pollock, what we’d do with a million dollars, what to keep in a bomb shelter, Ernest Hemingway, Julia Child, Tennessee Williams, Richard Nixon, lunatic teachers we’d had in school, cats, communism, astrology, Catholicism, the British monarchy, how’d we recast the “Wizard of Oz,” how’d we redesign the human body, a funny story about our Aunt Ellen, a funny story about our refrigerator, and shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings. It didn’t seem to matter what we talked about; if we were boring, someone would interrupt and change the subject.”

Of course, people still “talk” today…

“…but not for fun. They talk about their grievances, called ‘therapy,’ and their anger, called ‘venting,’ and their relationships, called ‘communicating.’ They talk at the conference table (‘brainstorming’) and the kitchen table (‘bonding’). But when they hear that their parents once gathered in groups of friends or relatives for the express purpose of amusing themselves and each other with talk, they’re as bewildered as if we’d been sacrificing virgins at the full of the moon.”

With such table “talk” today, no wonder we eat hurriedly. I believe the beginning of the end can be traced to the 1950s, when the television, t.v. trays, and frozen dinners pulled Americans away from the dinner table and replaced conversation with passive entertainment from a glowing box. We began staring at a screen, not each other. Talking became the province of paid professionals like Walter Cronkite and Jackie Gleason. How many restaurants today look more like sports bars (i.e. screens everywhere)? If there are no screens, not to worry, because we bring our own. Look around the next time you’re dining out. Heads are bowed at every table, but not in prayers of thanksgiving for the food.

I’ve caught a glimpse of hell. It’s not hot…it’s cold and blue.

Dining out is one of those catalysts which contribute to so many other important events in life. Marriage proposals, celebrations of all kinds, hard conversations, announcements, teaching moments with children, ways we show acceptance of others, peace-making, etc, all happen around a table, in a neutral, warm environment—preferably with linen table cloths and a bottle of something chilled sitting in an ice bucket close by. I surmise that we will not see positive change until our dinner tables are once again bigger than our flat screens. Dining out is not just about eating well, but living well.

Tabby, Alex, Brydon, and Innes, you are missed.