Marie thinks her husband is dead … no point in ordering a breakfast for him then. Actually he isn’t dead at all. Then it gets complicated …

Cold Heaven by Brian Moore

Brrrrrr ...

The breakfast waiter put his rump against the swinging doors of the kitchen and backed out into the breakfast room, balancing three trays of cafes complets. He turned around and went to Number 6, a Belgian couple and their daughter, putting in front of each of them a tray containing hot milk, hot coffee, butter pats, jam, marmalade, croissants, and petits pains. ‘Bon appetit,’ he told them and turned to see if any other guests had arrived. Number 24 was there, not the young man, just the young lady. He went over. He remembered that, although she was American, she had spoken French to him yesterday.

‘Bonjour madame. Vous avez bien dormi?’

Yes, Marie said, she had slept well.

‘Et Monsieur? Il arrive, Monsieur? Je vous apporte deuz cafes complets?

No, she said, just one breakfast. Monsieur would not come this morning.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling

Harry’s mouth fell open. The dishes in front of him were now piled with food. He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, chips, Yorkshire puddings, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup and, for some strange reason, mint humbugs.

When everybody had eaten as much as they could, the remains of the food faded from the plates, leaving them sparkling clean as before. A moment later the puddings appeared. Blocks of ice cream in every flavour you could think of, applie pies, treacle tarts, chocolate eclairs and jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, jelly, rice pudding …

Empire of the Sun by JG Ballard

Empire of the Setting Sun

As the uncut lawns grew deeper and the formal gardens deteriorated, they spent their time cooking small meals on a charcoal stove which they set up beside the cement statuary on the floor of the arnamental pond. The smell of bean curd and spiced noodles drifted among the disrobing nymphs.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

Next please ...

Tamina serves the customers their coffee and Calvados (there are never very many of them; the cafe is invariably half empty) and then goes back to her place behind the bar. There is almost always someone sitting on a bar stool wanting to talk to her. They all like her. She is a good listener.

That Summer by Andrew Greig

The meal lingers in my mouth’s mind still. There was a handwritten menu in front of each of us.

Summer of 1940

• Oysters or smoked salmon or grapefruit
  Thick or clear soup
  Steamed sole
  Glazed chicken with vegetables
  Iced puddings
  Savouries
  Coffee

To accompany this we had sherry, hock and champagne, and John and I applied ourselves with zeal to all of them. He explained to me how drink numbs the higher centres that control your repressions, thus giving free play to all your lower centres. I pointed out that I had no repressions so the drink would make little difference to me.

The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Table for one, but which one?

Tom celebrated by going to a Roman night club and ordering a superb dinner which he ate in elegant solitude at a candlelit table for two. He did not at all mind dining and going to the theatre alone. It gave him the opportunity to concentrate on being Dickie Greenleaf. He broke his bread as Dickie did, thrust his fork into his mouth with his left hand as Dickie did, gazed off at the other tables and at the dancers in such a profound and benevolent trance that the waiter had to speak to him a couple of times to get his attention.

Therese Raquin by Emile Zola

It's all going to end badly

In the morning, when daylight dispelled the terrors of the night, Laurent dressed at full speed. He only felt at ease and recovered his self-centred calm in the dining room, sitting in front of a large bowl of coffee and milk made for him by Therese. Madame Raquin, now so feeble that she could hardly go down to the shop, watched him with motherly smiles as he ate. As he swallowed his toast and filled his stomach he gradually recovered confidence.  After coffee he would take a small glass of cognac and that completed the cure.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room she indicated. From that room too, the daylight was completely excluded, and it had an airless smell that was oppressive. A fire had been lately kindled in the damp old-fashioned grate, and it was more disposed to go out than to burn up, and the reluctant smoke which hung in the room seemed colder than the clearer air — like our own marsh mist. Certain wintry branches of candles on the high chimney-piece faintly lighted the chamber, or, it would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its darkness.

Piece of cake, Pip?

It was spacious, and I dare say had once been handsome, but every discernible thing in it was covered with dust and mould, and dropping to pieces. The most prominent object was a table with a long tablecloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks stopped all together.

An epergne or centre-piece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite indistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckle-legged spiders with blotchy bodies run home to it, and running out from it, as if some circumstance of the greatest public importance had just transpired in the spider community.

The Crow Road by Iain Banks

Croaaaakkk

Lunch had been trying to convese with Christmas crackers. Her parents talked in mottoes. ‘Too many people worship money nowadays.’ ‘What you never had, you never miss.’ And Harkness’s favourite: ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ It was a while since he had heard that one and when Mary’s mother said it, he felt a brief shock of pleasure, as if he’s pulled a sturgeon out of the Clyde. Perhaps because they had a guest, they seemed determined to range far and wideamong the problems of the world, obliterating each with a scattergun of prejudice. Vandalism was ‘spoiled children’. Africans had been given ‘too much power for their own good’. The unions were killing our society. Throughout the meal they passed cliches back and forth like condiments. Harkness gagged himself with food.

The waiter brought Leonard his six oysters and brought me my hundred. The oysters were of the tiny island variety; six scarcely filled one indentation of Leonard’s oyster plate. My oysters had come in a tumbler. I scooped up about a dozen and swallowed them.