You go to a restaurant in the States and kids have these game boards at the table. You don’t see that in Italy or Spain. It’s not because they can’t afford to buy them, it’s because that’s not what eating together as a family is about.

Lagasse contrasts American restaurant culture—where children may be distracted by games at the table—with Mediterranean norms that treat meals as a shared social ritual. The point is less about money or consumer choice than about values: eating together is framed as conversation, attention, and participation in family life. Implicitly, the quote critiques a tendency to outsource togetherness to entertainment and to treat dining as an activity to be managed rather than experienced. Coming from a celebrity chef associated with convivial, communal food, it also reinforces a broader culinary argument: food culture is inseparable from how people relate to one another at the table.