What makes dining an experience

T

he great writer on all things food and dining, M F K Fisher, when asked once why she wrote of hunger and not of wars or love, famously replied “There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.”

Fisher realized better than any... that it is these metaphysical aspects of dining that add charm and mystery to the experience, and make it so often a leap into the unknown

Fisher had in mind dining as something far more than the physical activities of eating and drinking. Reading her anecdotes, which are full of vivid and celebratory descriptions of food and wine, it’s clear that much as she delighted in the sensuousness of dining, as important to her were its psychological elements – the insistent effect of ambience, the chemistry of the company, the hidden intentions and motives waiting to emerge and be heard, relationships poised to move in either direction, the insights gained, the inevitability of surprises … Fisher realized better than any, other than perhaps the legendary Brillat-Savarin, that it is these metaphysical aspects of dining that add charm and mystery to the experience, and make it so often a leap into the unknown.

Two very different anecdotes to illustrate this – the first from the book Serve It Forth.

In her early university years in France Fisher frequented, when finances permitted, the celebrated Ribaudot’s in Dijon. Returning there some years later with her lover, she sets out to recapture with him the pleasure enjoyed there. As they enter the corridor leading into the dining room, hints of neglect are ignored in her preoccupation with being recognized and accepted once more into that august company – essential to the evening she wanted it to be. Anxiety turns to elation when Charles the old waiter remembers her with nostalgic affection – “O my God… it is the little American student, the little lady… Has it been two years? Six? Impossible!” From this generous beginning the emotional tempo of the evening dips and veers. The initial confidence soon gives way to disappointment, irritation to nagging suspicion (“Charles is drunk. Yes Charles, the perfect waiter…”). Then on the edge of disaster the evening steadies, things become more as before, just as she had hoped they would be. There is all the pleasure and joy of a blissful re-visiting shared with another. An evening to remember. But not for these reasons. As they take their leave from Monsieur Ribaudot there is a revelation. Charles had been let go earlier that evening, “a fine waiter once” – he had stayed on this night just to serve her, had even left her a sad bouquet. And now in her desolation she could admit that the place itself was not as she had thought it. Not as she had wanted and determined herself to experience it. It had lost its eminence, was sliding into nonentity (a victim of social forces beyond its control), the dimness and shabbiness she had glossed over were decay, a spoiling from within. There would be no more visits, no more attempts to recapture its past.

The motives that drew her to that sad restaurant on that evening were quintessentially dining

The motives that drew her to that sad restaurant on that evening were quintessentially dining. They ended in disillusionment, though not with the dining experience; rather the realization that precious things are the ones most likely to change. “The same object cannot give us the same sensation over again,” observed William James, father of psychology. The desire to re-experience in itself taints the memory of what occurred before. Could the emotional outcome at Ribaudot’s and its rollercoaster lead up have occurred in some other social setting? Thin and pallid versions of it perhaps; neither so rich nor eventful. The dining experience brings a dynamic to human interaction that’s hard to reproduce outside of it. What occurred to the young Mary Frances Kathleen Fisher on that evening comes with the territory.

Which begs the question whether someone else in that same restaurant that same evening, unreceptive to all but the mechanics of eating and drinking, reflecting on neither and moved by no feelings, could be thought to have dined at all. The basic requirement for the experience of dining is a degree of engagement, plus…

The next example is from The Gastronomical Me. Living now in Switzerland with Chexbres, her dining companion of the Ribaudot’s episode, she invites her young student brother to join a group of friends for dinner at their home, accompanied by his debutante date. Through the course of a meal the young American girl displays a pseudo-sophisticated crassness in her reactions to the company, the setting, the food (simple yet exquisite), the wine (a 1929 Corton – Burgundy’s greatest year) which Fisher and her companions charmingly ignore. The anecdote is too lengthy to do justice in abbreviation but it illustrates nicely a central point about dining. That respect is essential. Without a feeling of respect – for the food and wine, and their presentation, the setting and accoutrements, the hostess or dining room staff, for the dining experience itself – then the finest fare may as well be muck served in a swill.

Take away the metaphysical elements in the dining situation and there is no experience worthy of the description

Take away the metaphysical elements in the dining situation and there is no experience worthy of the description. As her young brother discovered that day (though not his date), the “communion” that Fisher speaks and writes of so reverently transcends the physical even as it depends on it, and only together can they reach heights. Think about this the next time you set out to dine, and remember that your evening will depend as much upon what you bring to the dining situation as what you find there.

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