I have a theory about dining tables. Like all my theories, it was developed over lunch and has never been peer-reviewed.
The dining table, we're told, is furniture. Nonsense. A table is a clue to urban planning. Show me a city's tables and I'll tell you how its people talk, how they eat, and roughly how much they're about to be charged.
Take the Lebanese restaurant. I love the Lebanese. But before you've found the menu, a man has emptied an entire household fridge in front of you. Lettuce. Pickles. Olives. Bread, a second wave of bread, and a raw carrot, for reasons known only to Allah and the chef. It's a magnificent welcome, and a freight operation. It all needs somewhere to land, so the table must be the size of a helipad. A half-empty helipad looks sad, so you order to fill it.
This isn't hospitality. It's genius.
The other day I popped into one for a takeaway. A takeaway. Within a minute the welcome had walked me to a table, and I was sitting down with my daughter. Not even the big round one. A square one, which was still the size of a small playground: too big for four, not quite enough for eight. They brought a baby chair. I always sit beside her at the corner, so I can help. So I shuffled left, she shuffled into the corner, and there we were, two canary birds perched on the edge of an enormous empty table, chatting and giggling in about a tenth of it.
That's urban scale in one lunch. Build it as big as you like. People will still find the corner and sit close.
Sadly, the big table has escaped into the coffee shop. I've watched four grown men at a slab of reclaimed oak you could land a Cessna on, each nursing one matcha, like survivors of a very expensive shipwreck.
A big table pushes people apart. Sit at one with your family and you're not having dinner. You're holding a press conference. Ask your son for the salt and he needs a run-up.
Now go to Paris, where land costs more than oxygen and the café table knows it. Two coffees and a croissant and it's full. People lean in and talk quietly. Nobody orders six starters, because there's nowhere to put them. You choose one thing, and you taste it.
Hence my rule. Totally unscientific. Almost never wrong.
Vast tables, mediocre coffee.
Small tables mean someone in the kitchen cares. And if they don't, at least you heard what your wife said.
A small table is cheaper, fits more people, wastes less food and keeps a family together. Which is presumably why almost nobody buys one.
So measure the table before you choose the chandelier. If your guests have to shout, it's too big. If they have to text each other, it's a runway.
Practically speaking,Omran