Simone Weil at the table

In 1920s-1940s France, a worker's meal was not divided into the bourgeois starter-main-dessert. It revolved around the "gamelle" (the metal container brought to the factory and reheated on the stove), the "casse-croûte" of bread and cheese eaten standing up, the evening "soupe" that served as a whole meal, and the "boisson chaude" that warms and staves off hunger. Simone Weil, out of ethical choice, reduced her table to this popular and frugal structure: eating like the workers, no more than them.

Dark country bread ("pain bis"), barely accompanied, is the pillar food of Weil's asceticism: the poor person's food, shared with those who toil. Olive oil, brought back from her years in Marseille, is its only luxury.