Last Sunday I was looking through the Observer’s Food Monthly magazine when a particular article caught my eye. It was an interview with the philosopher of everyday life, Alain de Botton (Cadwalladr, 2012). Botton has recently written a book entitled ‘Religion for Atheists’ in which he suggests that ‘civil society should steal the things religion does well but leave out all the God stuff’ (ibid). The heading caught my eye because it said something about Botton’s plans to open a restaurant based on the Christian Mass. In the course of the interview, the conversation turned to a focus on the obsession with food, rather than on that of gathering and meeting; that sometimes so much effort goes into creating the food but that that is only part of the experience.
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