Applications of Elegance (III)
On an elegant table.
“We each begin as guests, every single one of us.”
- Priya Basil, “Be My Guest”
If the kitchen concerns cooking, the table concerns eating. And while there can be eating without cooking, there is no cooking without eating, without the table. The table is central and essential, the ultimate culmination of the most human endeavours: loving, caring, sharing. The table is the beginning and the end, and often a large part of the middle: it is the love of eating and the table that sends man into the kitchen; the desire to satiate or nourish that drives lovers and mothers to the stove.
But the table is more than the practical; the table is about generosity, and humanity’s oldest art form: hospitality - a difference captured clearly in Italian, where il tavolo is a piece of furniture, and la tavola – in the feminine – a table laid and ready to receive – ricevere – to play host. If the kitchen is the heart of the home, the table is the soul.
A table at its most successful is delicious, beautiful and inviting.
But while cooking can be taught, and beauty bought, hospitality – like style – is something ephemeral and somewhat inborn. Just like style, it can require next to nothing but, account for everything. And while the eye can be trained and sensibilities sharpened, true hospitality – again just as style – is never fully and entirely learned: at its core is an attitude, above everything an energy. It is clear to see but neigh on impossible to bottle. The gestures can be imitated, and even superficially replicated, but intensions never be faked.
The hallmarks of good hospitality are making people feel warm and welcome.
That old adage really rings true here – people will most remember how you made them feel. Hospitality doesn’t need fancy foods or expensive wines or china. The thought really does count, and most of all the heart. And wherever there is a (well-intentioned) will there is always a way, whatever the experience or budget.
With that in mind, hearty declarations aside, an elegant table is:
1. Fit to the purse strings of the host
Boring but true, and going both ways – no guest feels comfortable showered with excessive generosity above the means of their host – but neither is it pleasant to be offered little when surrounded by a lot.
2. Familiar and new
The first Christmas party I gave in Italy featured a collection of seasonal delicacies zealously assembled on various trips to Switzerland, Paris and London prior to the party. My heart still breaks at the disappointed faces of the two young daughters of a friend, confused and quietly outraged at not finding any ‘pizzette’ on offer – unheard of for a party in Italy. A mix is always the way.
3. Generous in quantity but not overboard
I know a smooth looking European gentleman who is perpetually over-ordering on behalf of his tables, to the point where usually half is left untouched. Food and drink should always be plenty, but over a certain quantity will always verge on bad taste.
