I recently came back from a trip to Paris (said as though I often hop on the Eurostar to visit my favourite boulangeries and cafes) where I spent my time simply wandering their beautiful markets, picking up an obscene amount of bread, smelly cheese and cured meats, and sitting under their obtrusive landmark. There’s nothing I love more than laying on a delicious spread for myself, picking at little or big bits and eating until I’ve run out of belt holes. It’s just, when I have to enjoy a spread with someone else, I can get a little panicky. I’m not a sharer. It’s all I can do not to bat the other person’s hand away every time they get a little too close to the last fistfuls of floury bread, and I often find myself manoeuvering my body so that I’m shielding the last few chunks of cheese from beady little eyes. Get your own spread, mine’s not for sharing.
Sharing seems to be the thing these days though, doesn’t it? On every menu you come across, you have your standard a la carte section and then a section with one or two things scribbled under the title: sharing platters, or worse, sharers. Why? Is it because they imagine that some people might be a little bit peckish but would rather share a meal because they’re not quite hungry enough to have a whole one? You would think, but actually sharing platters are often huge and the equivalent to a couple of meals, so what’s the big idea? I suppose it’s meant to be more sociable, but really I think it just causes unnecessary friction. You’re supposed to be enjoying a nice lunch with a friend, gossiping, drinking wine and nattering away, but when you order a sharing platter, the lunch is spoiled by the fact you have to keep an eye on how much each person has had to ensure it’s one hundred per cent fair, and then you fight over the last, smallest piece of whitebait. Whitebait on a sharing platter, so bloody London.
It’s not even just the fact that you have to put up with the possibility of your friends falling for the sharing platters on the menu, it’s that you’re just expected to share your food, wherever you are, whatever you order, even if it’s quite impossible to share. Can I try some of your soup? Are you completely mad? What an awkward position to put me in, especially when they don’t even have their own spoon. If you go for drinks and you’re sensible and order yourself a few chips to keep the wine down, suddenly they become chips for the table and everyone starts digging in. Perhaps that’s the rule, anything put on the table between friends is for sharing. I might start eating them on my lap.
I went on a date once (just the once) and ordered myself a large salted popcorn, and was only briefly embarrassed when my date said he didn’t want anything. Only briefly because I’d already decided I wasn’t going to see him again after the film. When he started leaning over and dipping into my popcorn I considered leaving then and there. He had made the decision not to buy his own, yet he continued to eat the majority of mine, sticking his large hands in and out of the box – god knows where they’d been. That’s the other problem with sharing food, especially when there are no forks involved – the double dipping, the touching of every crisp as you squeeze your hand back out of the bag. If this sharing lark is going to continue, everyone needs to start carrying around hand sanitiser.
I imagine that it certainly will continue, too. With all these painfully ‘hip’ restaurants encouraging relaxed vibes, throwing away their cutlery, putting monkey nuts under starters and adding new sliders and sharers everyday, I expect that soon I won’t be able to enter a restaurant that doesn’t expect me to withstand the cross contamination and awkwardness that comes with sharing. Perhaps I’ll eventually get used to it.
Of course, if you order something that looks particularly tasty, I do expect you to share it with me…
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