Weeks of simple suppers with my kids during Covid-19 lockdown have made me forget how to eat out – which is why I blew it with the surf’n’turf
A restaurant isn’t so much a vendor of food as a series of understood behaviours and expectations. It is as granular as how fast you walk in (not like a bull entering your own house, but slowly, like a welcome acquaintance, entering someone else’s); where you stand once you’re in and what face to make; how to read a menu; how to talk to the waiter; how loud your voice should be. I’ve forgotten it all. Or it’s all been capsized. Or some combination of those two things has happened. I’m doing it all wrong.
I’ve forgotten how to choose food, which is the worst of it. In all the sumptuous home cooking that’s defined the year so far, two critical groups have been forgotten – people who live alone and people who live with children. It is paralysingly difficult to justify fancy-pantsing around with interesting ingredients, just for yourself. It’s like trying to fashion yourself a really exquisite pun. I mean, you could. But why would you?
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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