Table

"I don't understand how a young couple can begin life by buying a sofa or a television," [British chef Fergus Henderson] said indignantly to me.  "Don't they know the table comes first?"  The table comes first.  The table comes first, before the meal and even before the kitchen where it's made.  It precedes everything in remaining the one plausible hearth of family life, the raft to ride down the river of our existence even in the hardest times.  The table also comes first in the sense that its drama - the people who gather at it, the conversation that flows across it, and the pain and romance that happen around it - is more essential to our real lives..."
~ Adam Gopnik in The Table Comes First