At the table - One more chair...

This month, rather than a focus on food and what makes our table groan, we feel a bit caught up in remebrance. Of course that in itself is quite fitting for November. It is a month roomy with retrospection, governed for most of us through the memorial of the 11th hour of the 11th day, to the waste they called "Great War".

Mexico celebrates grief through continuity on the día de los muertos and the left-footers of Europe do their own version of their very best, on All Saints day. America gives thanks in their own bloated show of bigness with Thanksgiving feasts.

"Toussaint" (November 1st) in France is a slightly-muted, mostly full-on celebration, but a gathering of enthusiasts nontheless. Around fold-up tables with plastic plates and on picnic blankets draped in chrysanthemum-stewn graveyards. Sounds a bit modern-day Miss Haversham, but it's really not. You see in France, there is a great tradition of "table". They seldom eat off trays and tend to scoff loudly at TV dining. Tables are the canvases on which food is properly respected, at which politics are hotly debated and sports results often prove a great divider. In French farmhouses and village homes, this is the quiet-ish tradition. But there is something more. An invisible detail that many will miss. In almost every background to this country's constant conviviaslity, there always seems to be an extra seat. It doesn't matter if its a house where the cutlery is carefully counted or one where none of the plates actually match, the French seem to posess a sense to always prepare, for one more chair.

This is not just neighbourly logistics - although France is certainly a nation that embraces the discomfort of the social "drop-by" - it's a philosophy. French hospitality is rooted in the belief that abundance is not governed by plenty, but by largesse. From the long wooden tables of the southwest, to the polished granite counter-tops of posh apartments in the 16th, French kitchens hold this memory well: the table will always expand to fit the people that need seating around it.

The French don't go as far as setting empty chairs at crowded tables in the literal sense, but the spirit is there: memory folded into the meal, a parking space kept open in gratitude for those who came before. This “always one more chair” spirit is more than courtesy; it is cultural muscle. In Gascon villages, I’ve seen neighbours appear at mealtimes without notice, greeted not with surprise but with another glass and another slice of pâté en croute.

To welcome someone unplanned is not disruption but joy. It is the French way of saying: yep -not only have enough, we have more.

The attitude of gratitude

In November, thanks at the table is not only for what we eat, but for who we eat with — and for the openness to whomever is yet to arrive. Celebration with possibility. A joyful just-in-case.

So the lesson of one more chair might be this. It is part and parcel of the perfect place setiing. a willingenss to stretch out and scoot over, to pull up another stool. It is an act of faith that there will always be enough soup in the kettle. If that is indeed where you keep your soup.

Platform 13’s Dish for One More: “La Soupe Paysanne”.

In the French countryside of yore, when an unexpected guest arrived, no one would have panicked like we would today - and let’s be honest here, even the best of us inwardly recoils somewhere on the terror-spectrum of an unannounced drop-in. The answer would almost always be a pot on the stove — a soup that stretched to welcome whoever walked through the door.

Soupe paysanne (literally “peasant soup”) is not a fixed recipe, but a sure thing. A base (bien sûr)of onions and garlic, a few wonky leeks or carrots, potatoes for the soul, red beans from a tin, and whatever greens are looking out from that see-through box in the fridge. Served with a torn baguette and a glass of some unfinished, ropey red, it is warmth clothed in kindness.

It's not all fine dining, but it is all about fine living, and something we could all do more of.

📄 Download Soupe Paysanne Recipe Card