他她話題:餐桌布置藝術最顯身份(1)

A couple of weeks ago, an odd message appeared on Twitter. An American food writer, sitting in a very exclusive restaurant, posted a picture of a spoon. Unlike the average tweeted food porn, this was accompanied by a plaintive request: what is this thing and what is it for? The tweeter, Kat Kinsman, is managing editor of CNN Eatocracy and she was sharing a table with a group of other high-powered foodists at a dinner honouring Thomas Keller at the time she hit "send". Kinsman has prior form with flatware, as she mentioned later: "I have an MFA [master of fine arts] degree in Metalsmithing and am always deeply amused by antiquated or single-purpose items like grape shears, lamb handles, fish knives, etcetera." The spoon, as a rapid Google search established, was a cuillère à sauce individuelle, with a flat spatula-like bowl, so sauce can be scraped from the plate without tilting it, and a notch through which any superfluous fat can drain.

幾周前，Twitter上出現了一條怪信息：在一家很高檔的餐館，美國某美食作家當場在Twitter上貼出了一張勺子照片。與其它通常張貼的美食圖片不一樣的是：這張照片後面附了一則略帶憂鬱的設問：這是什麼？能作何用？發照片者爲CNN Eatocracy美食博客總編輯凱特•金斯曼(Kat Kinsman)，點擊"發送"鍵時，正與一夥高級美食家就坐一桌，參加給托馬斯•凱勒(Thomas Keller)捧場的晚宴。金斯曼之前也曾在網上發過扁平餐具的照片，正如她事後所說："本人獲得過金屬加工的美術碩士學位，一直對有年頭或是功能單一的餐具（葡萄剪、羊肉手柄、食魚刀等）情有獨鍾。"快速搜索一下Google網，就知道它是帶有扁鏟狀匙底、單獨舀湯用的勺子，有了它，從盤子裏舀湯就不再怕傾斜，勺子上的缺口則能濾掉多餘的油。

It's reassuring to a food geek, of course, that such a specialised piece of kit exists. Yet the idea that a culinary Pythia of Kinsman's stature had to connect with a worldwide network of food nerds to find out what the hell she was eating with means something is a little out of whack. As she puts it, "I felt in the presence of exceptional schmanciness."

當然，美食專家坐擁這麼一件具有專門用途的餐具會顯得底氣十足。但一想起金斯曼這樣高造詣的美食專家還得與全球的美食網民套近乎，以確認自己享用大餐所用的餐具是否上檔次，這事本身就有點不正常。正如她所言："看到如此華麗精緻的餐具，感覺有點茫然不知所措。"

Any way you look at it, the use of utensils at table is culturally specific. In our own history, it was comMon to carry a knife in readiness for food. Only in the 17th century did the fork finally reach the English aristocracy, by way of France and Italy. Even then, it was regarded as an affectation and occasionally banned by the Church in various parts of Europe as an affront to God. The use of cutlery by ordinary people wasn't common in England until the 18th century, when cheaper methods of mass production began to make such aspirational objects more widely available.

不管怎麼看待它，如何使用餐桌用具蘊含特定的文化內涵。縱觀人類歷史，飯前備一把刀司空見慣。直到17世紀，在法國與意大利的影響下，叉子才正式被英國貴族社會所接受。即便那時，使用叉子仍被視爲做作之舉，歐洲基督教會還時不時以其冒犯上帝之由發出禁令。在英國，一般民衆18世紀才普遍使用餐具，成本更低的規模化生產讓這種夢寐以求的餐具成爲尋常百姓的日常用具。

Like pretty much everything else the English have adopted, we quickly made cutlery into a class signifier. Throughout the Georgian and Victorian periods place settings expanded with great armouries of increasingly specialised and elaborately decorated utensils. Some, such as the soup spoon – with a wide, deep bowl and offset to remain level when bringing the soup to the mouth – were fantastically useful when eating socially and sumptuously dressed. Others, such as the fish knife – supposed to be useful in separating and lifting off cooked fillets – were worse than useless and became symbolic of arriviste ostentation. Perhaps this is the root of the longstanding rumour in foodie circles that the royal household doesn't use fish knives (though they do appear at formal banquets). The Buckingham Palace press office politely "refuse to confirm or deny" this.

與英國人所接受的其它事物大同小異的是，他們很快把餐具變身爲身份等級的標誌。縱觀整個英王喬治及維多利亞統治時期(Georgian and Victorian periods)，隨着分工越發明確、裝飾越發精巧的餐具的出現，餐位餐具的擺放也越趨複雜。對於衣冠楚楚、但又希望有好吃相的人來說，匙底寬深、有一定弧度，能確保喝湯時仍呈水平狀態的湯匙就有了大顯身手的機會。其它餐具如食魚刀——想當然地以爲它方便切夾熟魚片——則一無是處，成了暴發戶賣弄的象徵。這也許就是美食界一直傳言王室家族不使用食魚刀說法的由來吧，雖說它們也現身於正式宴會場合。對此說法，白金漢宮(The Buckingham Palace)新聞辦公室則用"不置可否"來禮貌地做出迴應。

John Betjeman's poem "How to Get on in Society" ruthlessly minces such pretensions, listing fish knives, serviettes, frills on cutlets, cruets, pastry forks and doilies. That's six references to place settings in a 20-line poem widely regarded as one of the wittier comments on the British class distinction. Let's face it, as a nation we're probably more obsessed with what's set around our plates than we are with what's on them.

在自己的詩作《如何在社交場得心應手》(How to Get on in Society)中，約翰•貝傑曼(John Betjeman)以食魚刀、餐巾、烤肉架、調味瓶、點心叉以及桌布爲例，對餐桌禮儀的細枝末節娓娓道來。在總共20行的詩句中，通過這六種東西闡述了餐位餐具的安排，被視爲是對英國身份劃分最爲睿智的評述。我們得正視此事，因爲從整體而言可能更多"沉迷"於餐盤周圍的擺放，而不是在乎餐盤裏擺放的東西。

The haute cuisine restaurant is the exemplar of the notion that to dine well, one must lay the table well. My chance to understand the extent of contemporary table theatre came when I was offered a place on "The Art of Fine Dining" masterclass at the three-star Alain Ducasse restaurant at The Dorchester. The dining room contains what is often billed as the most beautiful table in London, "Table Lumière", which is "surrounded by a luminescent oval curtain of 4,500 shimmering fibre optics" and equipped with what I can only describe as the Mother of All Sideboards, a floor-to-ceiling display cabinet containing the three sets of Hermès china, Puiforcat silverware and Saint-Louis crystal from which diners can select their own settings. Table Lumière also has its own separate dishwasher: that's a man, not an appliance.

要想吃好，就得講究餐桌布置，高檔餐館是貫徹此種理念的典範。本人獲邀參加在倫敦多切斯特酒店(The Dorchester)三星級餐廳艾倫•杜卡斯(Alain Ducasse)舉辦的名爲"舌尖上的藝術"(The Art of Fine Dining)高級培訓班，算是有幸瞭解了當代餐桌禮儀之博大精深。杜卡斯餐廳擁有一張名爲Table Lumière的餐桌，被譽爲是全倫敦最漂亮的餐桌，四周掛着擁有4500根閃着微光光纖的橢圓形窗簾，並配備着各種最精華餐具。在整整一面牆的陳列櫃裏，擺放着愛馬仕(Hermès)瓷器、皮福爾卡(Puiforcat)銀器以及聖路易(Saint-Loui)水晶三整套餐具，用餐者可任意組合，還配有單獨的洗碗工：一位男士，而非洗碗機。

Nicolas Defrémont, the effortlessly suave restaurant director, dressed me in a brown overall and a pair of cotton gloves and took me through the process of setting one of the more ordinary tables. Table and chairs are aligned to the geometry of the room and centred under individual pools of light. The tablecloth is ironed into position. Crockery and cutlery are wheeled to the table on a special cart and polished individually, before being laid out using a complex system of measures based on the width of a finger (God help you if you don't have Michelin-approved digits). As each piece is placed relative to the last, a simple error of millimetres at the beginning of the set-up can snowball, resulting in the whole table having to be reset. Defrémont believes that a setting should actually be as simple as possible – there's no terrifying phalanx of weaponry these days. The starter instruments are laid on either side of the "show" or decorative plate and the waiter will exchange them for the correct bespoke tools according to your order.

溫文爾雅的餐廳總管尼古拉•德弗雷蒙特(Nicolas Defrémont)讓我穿上棕色工作服，戴上棉質手套，然後讓我體驗佈置普通餐桌餐具的整個流程。餐桌與椅子要與房間的形狀成一線，並位於各種燈具的正下方。桌布要熨燙平整後鋪擺到位。器皿與餐具要用專用推車推至餐桌旁，再一件件擦亮，然後根據複雜的度量方法（由手指的寬度來確定，這是米其林星級餐廳的通行做法，若您沒有手指，嘿嘿，那就沒轍了）把它們擺放到位。由於餐具相互之間的擺放環環相扣，若一開始失之毫釐，最終則可能謬以千里，到頭來只能推倒重來。德弗雷蒙特認爲餐桌的佈置實際上應儘可能簡單——如今不再裏三層外三層地擺放各種餐具。剛開始的餐具就擺放在裝飾盤的一邊，服務員會根據你所點的菜，適時把它們換成相應的專用餐具。