Word: meal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...better times, Christos Kortzidis never skips a meal. Yet, for most of this month, the mild-mannered mayor of Hellenikon, a seaside suburb south of Athens, has sat squat in a rusting folding chair in his office, surviving on water and fruit juice. "Starvation," he says, "was my last resort in order to pressure authorities to save the [Greek] beaches from further exploitation." Elected on an independent ticket last October, Kortizidis has lobbied for years against the privatization of Athens' prime beachfront, urging the centre-right government to take on the nightclub owners and entrepreneurs whose leisure venues along...
...rooms that separate them from others. But lately, whether out of a modern need for community or an ancient urge to break bread in company, sharing dining space with strangers is appealing to a growing number of diners at all levels of the food chain. "I eat so many meals rushed, in front of the TV," says James Wheeler, 28. "It's sometimes nice to share a meal with people." Even if they are people he has never met before. Wheeler can often be found on Sundays swapping pots of jam with neighbors at the wooden farm table...
...tradition of paying to eat a meal at a table alongside strangers can be traced, as so many other dining customs can be, to 18th century France. A 1786 decree ordered caterers, who once fed the nobility in their palaces, to serve all customers in shops. The shared tables in these restaurants were celebrated as social equalizers. Across Europe, community dining has remained a key element of bistros, beer halls and tapas bars. "It's a very European thing," says Vincenzo Lauria, assistant professor of table service at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and a native...
...night, the interaction between groups started with food ("Oh, what's that?" as a plate of shaken chili beef tartare arrived) but quickly progressed to a discussion about the latest handbags from Chloé, a debate about police brutality and an exchange of phone numbers at the end of the meal. Just like at a great dinner party...
...Certainly the battle for dinner between the lions and crocs was nothing unusual. Plenty of animals subscribe to the are-you-going-to-finish-that? school of eating, rarely waiting for the answer before trying to help themselves to someone else's meal. Even top predators like big jungle cats may spend as much time defending a kill as eating it, one of the reasons some of them will carry a carcass up into a tree before tucking...