The Long Sunday Lunch, or: The Meal That Refuses to End
At some point between the second glass and the clearing of the main course, you will notice that nobody is in a hurry. This is the sign. This is when you know that what you are attending is not simply lunch but the long lunch — the meal that starts at one and finishes when someone looks at their watch and says, with what sounds like surprise but probably isn't, "is it really nearly five?" And everyone nods in a way that suggests this outcome was always inevitable, and someone refills a glass anyway, and the afternoon extends a little further, like a cat making itself comfortable on a warm surface. I have never once been sorry to be at one of these meals. I have, on occasion, been moderately sorry the following morning. This seems like a reasonable trade. The long Sunday lunch exists, in various forms, in almost every culture that has ever taken food seriously, which is most of them, which is everyone, which suggests the impulse is not really about food at all. In I...
