THE big round table at my parents? house always had my family sitting for hours through lunch, merienda and dinner whenever there was a birthday party or an anniversary or during holiday celebrations. There were always new stories to tell, an oral report of how life has been for our big family. Today, that round-table scene is now at my house. And in spite of having our own e-mail group, there?s nothing like telling each other face to face while partaking of familiar food with wines we have declared to be healthy for us.

The grandchildren eat and play through those meals. While most just look at aunts and uncles who seemed forever glued to their seats, one more vocal than the rest always asks: ?You?re still here??

Once in a while, I allow myself those long lunches when work can be put on hold. Yet it still surprises me when the meal winds up that it?s been five hours. Where did the time go? I know where the calories went.

A long lunch happened recently at Restaurant Cicou with friends. We eagerly awaited what Chef Cyrille Soenen had planned for us and then the list came on a silver paper, a menu of nine dishes with five wines. We started with the appetizers of pork head pâté and rilletes (crisp strands of pork) taken with a sparkling Carte d?Or Brut. Someone mentioned the pork head pâté tasted very much like tokwa?t baboy sans the tokwa.

In a gathering of like-minded eaters, the courses and the wines that materialize one after the other doesn?t deter the conversation. Bursts of laughter punctuate the already noisy table. Thankfully Soenen and his wife, Anna, had placed us in the function room separated from the rest of the dining area with a heavy curtain.

Culinary talk

Sometime in the course of the menu, the talk traveled to Bacolod where Anna?s Gaston family comes from, to Pampanga where three of the guests live, to Mindoro where our photographer that day has a small place, to South Africa where I experienced a wine show and to France where Soenen?s father, who sat beside me, returned to a few days after that gathering.

Over a pleasant chardonnay (Vire-Clesse: Cuvee Tradition EJT 2003), we floated through fresh sardines marinated in olive oil and herbs with goat cheese, shredded King Crab in aspic and a bean sprout risotto with roasted scallops and shavings of dried ham. Looking through the menu today, I noticed how the French dish names are longer than the English translation.

The conversation then moved to foie gras when a well-presented duck liver in crisp sweet potatoes was placed before us. It reminded me how a group who must be part of the food police, those who like to mandate what we eat, told me they have encouraged chefs to create fake foie gras much like fake meat to appease the longing of lapsed vegetarians. Why bother? If the food police came around, they will not find a friend on that table. But we will offer them the excellent Bergerac: Moelleux 2005 unless they have objections to squeezing grapes because it offends their sensibilities.

Soup and fish came next, soup of lentil and roasted cod fish. Those were accompanied by my personal favorite make of wine, a pouilly fume?Petit Fume 2007. All of those elements were kept light because the next dish would certainly make the gastric juices work a lot more (which it already has through the more than three hours of eating).

If there?s a main dish through all that, then it must be the duck breast and duck liver pie amidst a salad of greens. Usually by that time, I would have given up but the camaraderie increases the appetite, and before I knew it I had finished my food and the wine, a pinot noir? Chassagne Montrachet: Vielles Vignes 2002.

By that time, we were in the twilight zone because the toasting occurred more often and the littlest comment produced giggles. The feeling of goodwill was all around. The dessert of passion fruit wrapped in chocolate and pan-fried strawberry is what should cap this meal, but it was really the company through those hours that just zoomed by.

Restaurant Cicou, Hotel Celeste, 2 San Lorenzo Drive corner A. Arnaiz Avenue, Makati City, 8896782 or 0917-8858841.

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