I personally believe that eating together “really” means waiting for the other person, or other people in front of one, or beside one, before starting to eat.
It isn’t just a question of good behaviour, it’s much more than that.
It’s more a question of awareness, of realizing that in a few moments we will be sharing something with people whom, usually, we care about.
The other evening I had some friends for dinner and was preparing a recipe with cherry tomatoes. I opened the box (I hadn’t had time to go to the greengrocer’s) and saw that several of the tomatoes had an “ugly face”. They were full of little black marks.
I pulled a face and said “Let’s wash these little tomatoes well…” and at the very moment what came to my mind were images of hands with dirty nails that pick the tomatoes, backs of hands wiping drippy noses, in brief, a horror film…