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Table Manners: The Thing about Tapas

When in Andalucia and looking to eat tapas, which one should always be doing when in Andalucia, I have one simple rule.

I was in Ronda last week, home of the oldest bullring in the world, perched astraddle the sheer El Tajo gorge and looking like a CGI set from a Star Wars film. I was talking to two American ladies I’d met in the street, and we were debating where to eat lunch. They had lists of recommended eateries and I did not. I like to lunch by serendipity. This has had some very good results and some very bad results. Continue reading “Table Manners: The Thing about Tapas”

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Table Manners: Competitive Eating

By Darrel Bristow-Bovey.

I was walking with my wife through the Sabine Hills in Italy and we stayed a night at an agriturismo – one of those organic farmsteads that give you a room and a bed and a meal of food grown on the farm. They’re very proud of the fact that everything is grown on the farm.

We sat down to dinner and the hostess placed a bowl of olives on the table and pitcher of water with slices of yellow lemon and a vase of flowers.

“The flowers are grown on the farm,” she said.

“Huh!” I said encouragingly, although to be honest I wasn’t that impressed by this news. Flowers have to grow somewhere. Continue reading “Table Manners: Competitive Eating”

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Table Manners: The Joys of Not Needing Supper

By Darrel Bristow-Bovey.

I wouldn’t choose to travel overseas with me. It’s not that I’m a cheapskate – actually, no, it’s precisely that I’m a cheapskate. I have ruined more foreign meals than an old man with an accordion wandering from table to table in an Italian restaurant. I sit and scowl at the menu, I purse my lips and make mental conversions into rands, I snarl at wine waiters and start suggesting to my wife that we share the main course. I am well aware that these are not attractive qualities but I can’t help it and it’s too late for me to change.

We were on Sipan island in the Elafiti archipelago, just off the coast of Croatia. The night before we’d been in Dubrovnik and had eaten at a restaurant whose name I have expunged from my memory because when the bill arrived I think I experienced a small stroke. Continue reading “Table Manners: The Joys of Not Needing Supper”

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Table Manners: Love, Life, and Takeaways

By Darrel Bristow-Bovey.

“Can I get the manti as a takeaway?” I asked.

The waitress stared at me as though she hadn’t fully understood.

“A takeaway,” I said, miming someone wrapping a small parcel and then handing it to another person who nods and smiles and takes it from the first person and sniffs it appreciatively then tucks it under their arm and walks away with it. I am excellent at charades and I don’t know why more people don’t want me on their team. “I think I’m out of time so I’ll have to take it away with me.”

She stared at me some more, her eyes growing wider. This was strange: she seemed to understand basic English when I arrived. She looked around in panic and waved to another guy who came over and they consulted, talking in low, urgent Turkish, throwing me looks of alarm and befuddlement.

Continue reading “Table Manners: Love, Life, and Takeaways”

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Table Manners: Suiting up for Manhood

By Darrel Bristow-Bovey.

For me, manhood meant a place at a table in a restaurant.

When I was very young in Durban my father had a ritual. Once a month on a Monday he would put on a clean white shirt and a tie and a sports jacket and leave the house alone. This was a strange turn of events, because ordinarily my father would never wear a tie or a jacket, and also this was Durban in the 1970s – the only people who wore ties and jackets were waiters and jewel thieves.

He would come home later in the evening, and I would hear his car pull up in the driveway and hear him open the front door and walk through the house, and I can’t remember if I ever asked him where he went in his clean white shirt and his tie and sports jacket, but I know it felt like a tremendous secret, something strange and terrible and not quite fit for the eyes of moms and small kids.

Continue reading “Table Manners: Suiting up for Manhood”