Food

The evening meal is an event whether it be in the sultry heat of a perpignan evening, outdoors, in the alley on rough trestle tables, or whether it is in the village restaurant, or some hotel.

A good meal should be an occasion with friends and family. It should last a good few hours and be over several courses, lasting through starters, main course, deserts, cheese, and coffee. Food is not to be hurried merely to satisfy mere hunger.

Bread is central to the food. My friend Igor, who comes from a part of Northern Spain once discussed with me the imporatnace of bread, as he negotaited, with religious zeal, with the manager in London restaurant for a bowl to be brought. "It should be a round bowl, and sliced, perhaps some brown and some white. It should be placed in the centre of the table so that people can take some and rip it with their hands and talk, " he said confirming the symbolic importance. So too in Freance, and perhaps especially in Department 66. But there is more bread in France than the simple baguette, the bayonette or the boule. Bread can be from the whole meal, mixed with cereal or nuts. There can be a variety of seeds from poppy to mustard and back. So bread eating becomes a journey of discovery, but one theme in the theatre of an evening meal, played out through the whole performance.