The harvest table

Fisher lives in a low house she designed in Sonoma, and when the harvest is in she sets a table that is deliberately simple: an omelette, oysters, a soup of watercress. She has little patience for performance in the kitchen, and she says so, gently, while Julia Child — who has built a career on performance — laughs and agrees.

James Beard is frail now and travels less, but he has come for the grapes and the company. The three of them are the last of a generation that made American food writing a profession, and they know it. They spend the evening talking about the meals they remember rather than the ones they are eating.