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A Hop, a Skip and a MingleWhen did food get in the way of dinner? In the 1995 movie Get Shorty, Danny DeVito drops into the deal-and-be-dealt Ivy restaurant for a meeting with John Travolta, orders up a kingly serving of food and then ups and leaves before a scrap of it arrives. Who could have imagined that DeVito was so delightfully ahead of the curve when it comes to dining low points in high places? The scene played out again earlier this year when Rachel Zoe – superthin stylist to stars like Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan – was at a dinner hosted by Tom Ford, the former Gucci wizard, at Wolfgang Puck’s new L.A. steak house, Cut. At the dinner – a celebration of Ford’s new fragrance, Black Orchid – it was reported that the designer became visibly irked when he noticed that Zoe’s chair was empty. “It was rude. She came for drinks and left, even though it was a small, seated dinner,” a source ratted to the New York Post. “She went to another party, then came back for dessert to make it look like she had been there all along. So tacky.”
ILLUSTRATION: LYNDON HAYES Tacky? Perhaps, but not all that surprising. Whether it’s a DeVito or a fashionista, somewhere along the road, it became de rigueur to not sit through an entire meal. To some extent, it’s part of the wider erosion of manners, but really, it’s because table-hopping is efficient and stimulating; why eat when you can multitask? This question is especially pertinent for the computer-addicted, ADD-afflicted young crowd, for whom going to a restaurant can be a bit like web surfing – and, well, who can help but scroll? “Like scattering atoms, they go” is how Ben Widdicombe, Gatecrasher columnist for the New York Daily News, sums up for me the table-to-table frenzy at places like the Waverly Inn in Manhattan. Back in Canada, at the country’s most glamorous literary event, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, held in Toronto every November, I’ve often noted that the Canadian publishing establishment is so jumpy that nobody, but nobody, sits idle between courses and that the table-hopping is akin to social speed-reading. Over in Oscarland, the woman who organizes the annual Governors Ball, Canadian Cheryl Cecchetto, once said that making the seating plan for such an event is like “seating the College of Cardinals at the Vatican,” but then just as quickly noted that nobody really stays in their chairs anyways. Dining out today – at a restaurant or a gala – is as much about working as it is about eating. You’re out to be seen, to be inventoried, to schmooze and to send non-verbal cues to the tribe about your worth. In that sense, the table almost gets in the way; the table is beside the point. Italian fashion king Valentino has some thoughts on the subject. Not long ago, he told Domino magazine, “I notice that young ladies in New York tend to move around the room more, oftentimes before the second course has been served. I do not approve of this and believe in staying seated from first course to dessert.” The 75-year-old designer has a point – the scattering atoms can be distracting, if not downright rude – but, sadly, sitting at a table for an entire meal seems as likely as forbidding jeans at dinner time or bringing smoking back into restaurants. But is it as much of a pandemic on the other side of the pond? I asked Bronwyn Cosgrave, a former editor at British Vogue, to fill me in. “Table-hopping does happen in London,” she wrote in a recent e-mail, “although it is a tad more discreet than in New York or L.A., purely because the British actually speak in a more hushed tone.” Louder than the space between tables – and, in fact, most ear-splitting of all –?is the empty chair, especially one situated beside an important person, as Candace Bushnell cannily captured in one of her original Sex and the City columns in The New York Observer. Writing about a night out at New York’s Bowery Bar, she said, “There’s Francis Ford Coppola at a table with his wife. There’s an empty chair at Francis Ford Coppola’s table. It’s not just empty: It’s alluringly, temptingly, tauntingly, provocatively… empty.” “It’s so empty,” she ends, “that it’s more full than any other chair in the place.” Write to us: letters@enroutemag.net Shinan Govani is the Scene columnist for the National Post and frequently appears on television commenting on celebrities and the social whirl. |
