‘Downton’ dining a fond reminder of formality

The vicarious dining thrills of “Downton Abbey” aren’t in the foodstuffs or dishes per se. Read any of the stories about the food of Edwardian and post-Edwardian England, and you will find the meals lavishly coursed but recognizable. Cream soups, poached fish, roasts and trifles get mentioned alongside any number of other dishes that seem like they could have come right from the menu of a cruise ship kitchen.

No, the appeal is more in the trappings and the notion that there used to be such a thing as a formal meal. At home and in restaurants, the idea of formal dining as anything appealing has just about disappeared.

Oh, I’m sure there are pockets of European aristocracy where service à la russe — guests helping themselves from serving dishes presented by table staff — is still practiced. There may even be a few human beings left who routinely have a soup, a fish course and a meat course with every meal.

But the kind of deliberate pacing and structure of the meal, as well as its momentousness, looks more and more like a relic of another era. If I ever told my wife I was dressing for dinner, she’d assume I meant sweatpants.

I might compare the most recent dinner depicted on "Downton Abbey" with an excellent one I enjoyed recently at the new Midtown restaurant Better Half. The young couple who own it, Zach and Cristina Meloy, used to run the supper club PushStart Kitchen and managed to go bricks-and-mortar with the help of funds raised with a Kickstarter campaign.

Zach, the chef, prepares striking dishes with a glimmering edge of modernity. Carrot soup gets poured tableside from a graduated beaker over a painterly composition of carrot tapioca pearls and toasted wheatberries. Pineapple cake comes with a “smoked milk syrup,” and the waiter explains the differing preparation of eggs in two dishes, one cooked sous vide, one not. It ain’t for nothing the Meloys proudly display a six-volume set of Nathan Myhrvold’s “Modernist Cuisine” on a bookshelf.

A decade ago, food this precise would have only been served in one of the city’s few formal dining venues of the time, such as the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton. But these kinds of restaurants have largely vanished from all but a few world food capitals.

We now have restaurants like Better Half, which are as proudly informal as it gets. With tables made of reclaimed wood and a tiny open kitchen that juts into the dining room like a bar, it feels as easygoing as a pub. Guests kick back over bottles of wine (BYO until the restaurant gets its liquor license), laugh loudly and wait to see what marvels arrive from the kitchen. (I’ll write more about the experience in next week’s Go Guide.)

Frankly, I’m always happy to dine in an informal restaurant with great food, as I think comfortable blue jeans make an excellent pairing with any meal. But every now and then I’d like to have one of those five-forks, neck-chafing-under-a-tie, serve-from-the-left-clear-from-the-right meals. That’s what makes Downton so delicious — imagining sitting at that table and helping myself to a fillet of sole from a dish held by my side. Guess I need to meet some aristocrats.