A Table for Two?

There’s a great article over at the Atlantic about how our dining habits are being influenced by our architecture and vice versa. Americans are less likely than ever to share a meal at home with guests, and when they do eat at home, it’s often on the couch around a coffee table.

Here at Host we’ve talked a lot about the need for longer tables, more tables, more frequent tables, so naturally we’re glad to see more research and advocacy backing us up. Maybe this is the nudge you need to put on a pot of chili and throw your own fall festival this weekend.

There’s a paywall, so I’ll include the best line here, which actually bookends the article itself.

Best Lines:

“The dining room is the closest thing the American home has to an appendix—a dispensable feature that served some more important function at an earlier stage of architectural evolution. Many of them sit gathering dust, patiently awaiting the next “dinner holiday” on Easter or Thanksgiving…

In an age when Americans are spending less and less time with one another, a table and some chairs could be just what we need. For what it’s worth, scientists have begun to think that the appendix does have a use—as a reservoir for healthy gut bacteria.

Dining rooms should be so lucky.”