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" Around the house, my dad was a brooding, intense guy. He glared. He shouted. At the end of a workday, standing at his rolltop desk, holding a sheaf of bills, looking over his shoulder at some disturbance in the living room, he flat-out scared me. But I loved eating with my dad. I would tell him anything when we ate. The guy was clear-eyed and wise over a bowl of soup. During high school, we ate every Saturday at a restaurant high atop an office tower in Rochester, New York. I had to get there first, pick a booth by a north-facing window, leave room for him to sit on the left, and order two Tabs with lemon. Every major conversation I had with the guy during those years occurred in that booth, over lunch. I had quit football suddenly. I&amp;#039;d banged up the car. I&amp;#039;d been in a fight. I&amp;#039;d cashed out my savings bonds without telling him. I&amp;#039;d paid for a girlfriend&amp;#039;s abortion. Through all this we ate. In this way, we got through it. Food filled the silences. Onion soup. Escarole and beans. New potatoes flecked with skin. Spinach \u2014 always spinach. T-bones. Hard rolls. French fries with grilled onions. Over time, my father told me his share, too: that he&amp;#039;d been married once before, that his new boss had refused to pay him for nearly a year, that his business seemed to be at an end. At these times, I could see that he was eating with a purpose: He ate like he meant it.  He had his quirks \u2014 he liked lemon wedges with his salad, he ate the tails of cooked shrimp, he despised the way I used butter \u2014 but he was not overly concerned with the rituals or compulsions of food. When he allowed himself to gravitate toward the comfort foods of an immigrant&amp;#039;s childhood \u2014 tripe, chicken gizzards, even bone marrow \u2014 he amazed me. A proffered forkful of food from my dad was his way of teaching. He wanted me to try things, to open myself up beyond cheeseburgers and tuna melts. And I gave it a shot, because there in that booth with the food in front of us, my dad could be trusted. When we were eating, I discovered him to be more than what I thought he was: braver, tougher, more generous, and more exotic than anyone I knew. When he ate, I wanted to be him. I&amp;#039;m almost fifty now. The last time I ate with my dad, he was living in a nursing home outside Albany. We&amp;#039;d sat in a big room, fluorescents and linoleum, full of skeletons four to a table eating tapioca out of paper cups. He was still brave about the food, although for different reasons. It was a struggle just to eat, for one thing \u2014 he did the best he could with a fork, and I fed him the rest. And the food wasn&amp;#039;t that good, of course, though he seemed to like the cheesecake. Despite how it sounds, none of this was particularly sad, except that now he didn&amp;#039;t talk while he ate. He couldn&amp;#039;t. I tried talking for a while, but I could see it stressed him. So then I was quiet. Yes, that part was sad. My father had forgotten what food was for \u2014 what he and I used it for \u2014 and that was unbearable. Eventually, though, he looked up and said, &amp;quot;You would like the cheesecake.&amp;quot; I nodded and went to get a piece, offered him some off my own fork, but he didn&amp;#039;t want any more. He said, &amp;quot;Go on, try it.&amp;quot; And he was right. It was good cheesecake, better than I thought it would be. It was delicious. &amp;quot;You look good when you eat,&amp;quot; my dad said. It was something he said sometimes. &amp;quot;You eat like you mean it.&amp;quot;  CLICK HERE for more of Esquire&amp;#039;s How to Eat Like a Man! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/food/a6241/father-son-lunch-0909/>