Essay archive

In a documentary about Tonga, the kingdom in the South Pacific, a doctor says to the camera: «When people here eat the healthy food from our islands, sweet potato or taro, they count as poor. When they eat bread and imported meat from a tin, they count as rich.»

Two identical doors, twenty-eight gender symbols on each, and a woman who asked the one question you are no longer supposed to ask. On a restaurant group that explains its values better than its rooms.

Tipping was never an obligation in Switzerland, at any rate not since the seventies, when service went into the prices. What remained was rounding up.

Mid-August, half past eight in the evening. The bass does not come down the lane, it comes over the roofs, from behind, from where the stage has its back.

I like it when an evening spills over the edges of the table, when two parties who did not know each other before fall into conversation. The exchange that does not end at your own tablecloth means a great deal to me.

The restaurant trade complains. It does so regularly, and not without reason.

At the entrance to a lakeside lido you expect certain smells. Hot fat, cervelat over the embers, the sweetish haze of chips and ketchup, and in between the smell of sun cream and wet wood.

The wine list arrives unasked. That is how it is in most restaurants: it lies on the table before you have sat down, or it is pressed into your hand shortly after you have taken your seat.

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote his aphorism in 1825, at the edge of a long life, large parts of which he had spent at the table. Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es.

There are places no tourist ever strays into. Places known only to those who belong, from the neighbourhood, from the neighbourhoods around it, quietly passed on among locals.

The most important political building of our time has no flag. It has a kitchen.