The Table Comes First

As a writer for The New Yorker for 25 years, Gopnik has been commenting on popular and eccentric American fads and sociocultural issues such as the NFL play-offs, the Internet, and our fascination with food and food preparation. Here, he satirizes the pleasures of the dining table—the routines of being beckoned by the family recipe or the restaurant menu, selecting what dishes to eat, socializing with fellow diners, and, finally, leaving with memories of the gathering. Within this framework, Gopnik comments on how we think about our daily practices of cooking and eating as an expression of the way we live and our changing values. He banters extensively on our obsessive interest in food, specifically in preserving traditional and regional cuisine, including the growth of local foodstuffs, and in applying technology to food preparation and presentation (e.g., molecular gastronomy).