In his book What I Ate in One Year, Stanley Tucci recalls a meal he shared with two friends in the heart of Rome. It was not Italian fare but French. L’Eau Vive is run by French Carmelite Nuns in a old palazzo, an upstairs room with vaulted, frescoed ceilings. Part way through the entree, the nuns passed around printed lyrics to hymns, all in French. Gathering at the end of the dining room, the sisters began to sing, inviting guests to join them. Tucci recalls it as unexpected, moving and beautiful:

“Being part of a group of strangers from all over the globe, brought together by food, our voices raised in song beneath the fading splendour of sixteenth-century frescoes on a cold Roman night, had a profound emotional effect upon all three of us. Although I was raised a Catholic, I never fully acquired the assurance of belief and therefore never really believed. Though I don’t miss going to church on Sunday, I do miss the certainty of ceremony and the security of reverence. But now, in the early winter of my years, it’s through nature, art, and my children that I experience reverence, and in moments around the table that I experience ceremony. All guilt-free.”