Whatever Is Mine Is My Family's. Almost.

The only big fracas during our family vacation on Nantucket last week happened at a restaurant there called the Ship’s Inn, after my daughter asked for some of the truffle hollandaise that came with my entree, and I told her, in effect, to go get lost. In retrospect, this was perhaps not my greatest moment as a parent.

“Dad! Just a taste!”

“It doesn’t go with your short ribs,” was the excuse I concocted on the fly. Even as I heard the words coming out of my mouth, I knew they were preposterous. First, there’s nothing truffles don’t go with. Even fig newtons. More important, this was a blatant violation of a dinner habit our family has followed for nearly forever. Sharing food at restaurants is standard practice among us, as long as it’s done graciously and with so little fuss that people aren’t likely to notice—the way, say, the president of the St. Mark’s bridge club might conduct herself if she ever decided to sell moonshine in the church’s parking lot from the back of her Lexus. The sharing practice is now so ingrained that some of us have been known to, as we ponder the menu, calculate not just how a given dish might taste but also what kind of premium it can command during the mid-meal swap market. In our family, we call this “entree arbitrage.”

But at the prospect of having to share my truffle hollandaise, I unilaterally suspended the rules and announced that, in effect, it was every man for himself. I couldn’t help it. With me, truffles induce a hoarding instinct not so different from what must have led the Collyer brothers to stockpile all those pianos. The results sometimes aren’t pretty. A year or so ago, Mrs. Banks and I were at for dinner with the children. One of the specials that night, which I haven’t seen since, was fettuccine alfredo with shaved black truffles on top. The dish ended up looking even better than it sounded, and tasted even better than it looked. My only worry once it arrived was that someone in the family would notice this little plateful of heaven in front of me and ask if I’d share some. To prevent that from happening, I embarked on the only countermeasure that came to mind: I ate as fast as I could. Mrs. Banks only noticed how quiet I’d been when she looked up and saw that I was licking the bottom of my bowl.

“How was the fettuccine?” she finally asked.

“Slrrp, rrrp, rrrp,” I told her.

At the Ship’s Inn that night, though, I didn’t have the presence of mind to wolf down my food. Worse, the truffle hollandaise arrived in its own miniature gravy boat, which conveyed the unfortunate and incorrect impression that it was property of the entire table rather than being mine, mine, mine. When my daughter asked for some, I knew I was in for trouble. Her taste for truffles is actually more pronounced than mine is. (She came by it, as she did a number of other premium-class partialities, during her semester abroad in Italy her junior year; don’t ever let anyone tell you that the most expensive part of sending a child to college is the tuition.) 

Sure enough, when I told her no, all hell broke loose. My daughter’s normally not the kind of girl to get up on her high horse when she gets a sense that her community property rights are being violated. Then again, the community property in question doesn’t usually have truffles in it. For a moment there, I thought she was going to burst into tears. Order was only restored after Mrs. Banks thought to ask the waiter if he might bring us a gravy boat or two full of hollandaise reinforcements. When they arrived, peace did, too, and we all went back to talking about what a great week we were having.