In Defense of the 6-Hour Dinner

Long Meals in France have a purpose!

We have a family joke at our house that “Papa can talk to a potato chip.” I think one of our daughters came up with this because my husband Philippe can carry on a conversation with anyone, anywhere, anytime, about ANYTHING. Seriously, it’s the man’s superpower. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Philippe in his element, at our local beach cabane (which is the local watering hole) waiting for friends to join him for a “pastis and a few hours of conversation”!

It wasn’t until we moved to France full-time that I started to connect the dots. This skill (and truly it is a skill!) is born during mealtime in France and is honed and polished through hours clocked at the table. What else is there to do when being held captive for several hours as the French meal runs its course?

This is something that, as a tourist in France, you may not realize since dining out in restaurants isn’t quite the same as sitting down to a meal in someone’s home. However, you get glimmers of it in restaurants when you…