This Australian dining tradition is now formally off the table | Peter Goers

We’re all avoiding beef Wellington now but this Aussie tradition was on the rocks well before Erin Patterson gave the dining table a bad name, writes Peter Goers.

This begins with an epergne. The g is silent – like p in bath.

That’s a very old gag. Noah came out of the ark with that gag- with Shemp and Ham.

An epergne is a large, highly decorative, glass or silver, generally hideous 19th Century dining table centrepiece to hold fruit or flowers. An epergne is about as useless as the current Liberal Party. I was waiting for a modest lot to come up in an online auction at a very posh Melbourne auction house. I tested bidding by swiping and, to my abject horror, bought a $2,500 epergne.

I don’t even have a dining table to put it on. Well, I do, but it’s covered in books and stuff. I haven’t sat at table to eat in my own home for 40 years. I eat every meal in bed watching TV and I recommend it.

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Mercifully, the auction house accepted my blunder and forgave my purchase and someone else scored the epergne and they’re welcome to it. Phew!

Apparently, 46% of Australians no longer eat at table. The kitchen table – once laminex and chrome, then Baltic pine and laid with a gingham tablecloth of our past – is past.

The formal dining room table with double damask tablecloth (overlaid with a plastic Christmas tablecloth) is going, going gone.

Kids with good manners. For Kids News and Hibernation. iStock image

Architecturally the dining room has disappeared and we have huge kitchens with huge faux marble island breakfast bars rather than a humble kitchen table.

Lots of Australians now eat meals sitting on couches with food on their laps or perhaps they use an Ottoman as a table while they watch enormous flat screen TVs.

We binge our food while we binge our TV. Or we eat propped up at the breakfast bar or we even eat standing up – like horses.

We’ve lost a lot of dining accoutrement – cruet sets, mustard pots, monogrammed napkin rings, cloth napkins, fish knives, the good china, toast racks, sauce jugs, gravy boats, tea cosies and the servery window.

We sit and eat while poring over and scrolling down electronic devices. We share pictures of what we’re eating with the world but don’t talk to or listen to people in the same room eating the same meal.

Families came together to break bread now families are broken. We grew as families and as people at table. We shared. We had – this is now an alien concept – conversation. Dinner, known as tea, was at 6pm. Sunday lunch, known as dinner, was at noon. Dad sat at the head of the table.

Mum cooked and served and the kids helped with the washing up and then we watched the Channel 9 News at 6.30pm. We never ate in front of the TV.

People are busier now or busy being busy rushing about hither and thither. There is less time to set a table and sit at it.

Mushroom murderer Erin Patterson has tainted beef Wellington for a generation. Picture: NewsWire/ David Crosling

Photos of Erin Patterson’s infamous deadly beef Wellington released after her Victorian murder conviction.

My maternal grandmother, widowed for 30 years, ate three meals a day on her own at a fully set table. I have a beloved nonagenarian friend who does the same still. It is ritual, formal self-respecting. Standards can be upheld.

Meat and three veg was replaced by fancy food although we’re all currently avoiding beef Wellington.

We now zap food in microwave ovens. We graze on grazing plates. We slurp noodles. We have food delivered.

Sitting at table was often uncomfortable and these days everyone must be comfortable at all times.

Formality has disappeared from all aspects of life not just eating at table. We want to be slobs. How wonderful.

At one point in my life as a non-cook I inherited seven dinner services. How ridiculous. I do love eating in bed although yiros is tricky.

There is less room for dining and kitchen tables in modern life – just en suites, home cinemas and outdoor kitchens under the vergola.

We used to plaintively ask “may we please leave the table” and now the table has left us. The family survives.

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Originally published as This Australian dining tradition is now formally off the table | Peter Goers