THE LONG TABLE SUNDAY LUNCHES

The Long Table Sunday Lunches are one table, laid in New York on each Sunday in June for twenty-four members who have put their names down: in a garden when the weather allows, and in a borrowed room when it does not. Members come without guests, and the house decides where everyone sits.

It exists so that members meet one another, rather than lunching with the people they already know.

The Host’s Table

Table d’hôte is French for the host’s table. From the end of the seventeenth century the inns and caterers of Paris laid one: a large table, a set price, a fixed meal, and whoever else had come.

The host, for all the name, seldom sat down at it.

Until the restaurant came, it was how most of Paris dined out. The restaurant offered a choice from a card, and in time a table to each party.

In English, where the phrase is found as early as 1617, it came to mean the set meal rather than the shared table.

The Long Table keeps the older sense: one table, one meal, and neighbours one did not choose.

The Afternoon

Twenty-four places, at one table, each Sunday in June.

Members arrive at half past twelve, and the table sits at one.

Every place has a card. The house sets them out the evening before, and they are not moved.

Two members who arrive together are seated apart.

Lunch is fixed and follows the season. It comes to the table on platters and is passed from hand to hand, and the wine stands on the table for members to pour for their neighbours.

Before the pudding, the house moves every other member six places along, and the conversation begins again.

Coffee is taken standing, and members leave with people they did not arrive with.

What Is Asked

A lounge suit, in a summer cloth.

No guests. The lunch is for members, and for meeting them.

The seating is the house’s, and is not changed on request.

Telephones stay in pockets.

Nobody is pitched at the table.

A member who has put their name down and cannot come says so by the Friday, so that the place can go to someone else.

The Places

Twenty-four each Sunday. It is as many as one table will seat and still be one company.

Members are written to in March, and may put their names down for one Sunday or for all of them.

The sum is stated in the invitation and covers lunch and what is poured.

The table is laid again in November, late on Friday evenings, for The Friday Supper Club.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.