Somewhere along the way, the dinner party shrank. Six guests, a set menu, home by eleven. This year, the long table came back: twenty chairs, mismatched glasses, dishes passed from hand to hand until midnight.
We spent an evening at one of them, in a stone house outside Lyon. The hosts cooked one enormous dish, bought too much bread and let the conversation find its own rhythm. Nobody looked at a phone.
A long table needs very little: one generous dish, good bread, enough chairs, and the willingness to let the evening run long. The food matters less than the time.
