The rituals we keep

He lifts his knife and fork slightly from the plate, leans back in his chair, and declares, with complete certainty: “That is the best meal I’ve ever had.”

The remarkable thing was that he said this often. Not every week, not at every restaurant, but often enough that it became part of family folklore. A perfectly cooked steak in a dark-panelled dining room in Devon. A fillet of sea bass overlooking the Thames, beneath long glass windows and the soft glow of the South Bank at night. Some tiny place in Peckham none of us could remember the name of afterwards, except for Dad, who would speak about the dessert wine for years afterwards as though it had altered the course of culinary history.

He had no embarrassment about enthusiasm. People are so careful now about appearing impressed. Everything has to be moderated, caveated, dulled and diluted. But my dad believed in liking things wholeheartedly. If the waiter recommended the special and it turned out well, Dad wanted the waiter to know about it. If the potatoes were exceptional, then everyone at the table was going to hear about the potatoes. If the wine was good, he’d insist everyone try it immediately.

And if the meal was wonderful, then it was, unquestionably, the best meal he’d ever had.

As a child, I thought this was simply one of his harmless exaggerations. Only later did I realise it revealed something essential about him: he approached pleasure generously. He allowed himself delight. More than that, he made delight communal. Enjoyment, for him, was never a private experience. It was something to be distributed around the table.

He loved restaurants with a certain old-school charm. Nothing ostentatious or too fashionable. Places with crisp white tablecloths and waiters who addressed him properly. Restaurants where the lighting was flattering and nobody hurried you through dessert. He was unfussy about food itself, but deeply appreciative when things were done well. A restaurant didn’t need to surprise him. It just needed to make everyone feel looked after.

And he always picked up the tab.

As a child, it never occurred to me that these long lunches and drawn-out dinners cost him anything at all. The meal arrived, we ate too much, coffee appeared, somebody contemplated pudding despite claiming to be full, and eventually Dad would reach for the bill with an air of inevitability. Sometimes there would be the pantomime of another family member offering to contribute, but we all knew how it would end. He paid because, in some profound way, hosting the evening mattered to him as much as the food itself.

Only after he died did I realise how much emotional architecture was hidden inside that gesture.

When someone else pays, especially a parent, a meal feels different. The evening becomes expansive. You order another bottle. You say yes to starters. You linger. There is the subtle but powerful feeling that somebody has temporarily suspended ordinary concerns. Dad created that feeling for us over and over again. Not extravagantly, not recklessly, but lovingly.

Now, when my family goes out together, the arithmetic has returned to the table.

We split bills. We glance at prices. Someone suggests skipping dessert. None of us is really in a position to absorb the cost the way he chose to, so the meals carry a slightly different emotional texture. They are still warm and enjoyable, but they no longer possess the same carefree quality he somehow generated.

Grief often lives in these tiny shifts of atmosphere. The absence of a familiar voice halfway through the main course. The moment the bill arrives and nobody reaches for it automatically. Reaching the end of a meal and realising nobody has declared it the best they’ve ever had.

I miss my dad in restaurants because restaurants were where his character expanded to fill the room. At home, people divide into tasks and routines. In restaurants, he became entirely himself: generous, opinionated, delighted, sociable. He loved the ceremony of it all. Arriving, ordering wine, discussing the menu as though strategic decisions were being made, toasting our latest birthday or achievement. 

There is one memory, or one collection of memories that have slowly merged, that I return to often. We are sitting in our local curry house beneath one of those strange illuminated paintings that never quite moved and yet somehow always seemed to shimmer. Indian music drifts softly through the room. Somewhere behind us, a trolley emerges from the kitchen carrying sizzling dishes that announce themselves before they arrive at the table. The air smells of coriander and smoke and warm spice. And my dad is completely rapt by it all, watching the dishes arrive as though witnessing theatre. Urging people to try things. Certain, already, that this might be the best meal he has ever had.

At the time, I barely noticed the significance of moments like that. Children rarely do. You assume family rituals are permanent while you are inside them.

After someone dies, memory behaves strangely. Entire years disappear, yet absurdly specific details remain intact. I cannot remember important conversations I had with my father, but I can remember the exact way he would wave away objections when paying the bill. I can hear the certainty in his voice when he praised a meal. I can picture him studying a dessert selection with complete seriousness despite insisting minutes earlier that he could not possibly eat another thing.

Perhaps grief is partly the process of learning that love survives most vividly in habits and gestures. Not only in milestones or declarations, but in repeated acts: pouring the wine, perusing the menu, insisting everyone order what they really want.

A few months ago, after a particularly good meal, I heard myself say: “That’s the best meal I’ve ever had.”

The words were out before I realised where they had come from.