Bingeing in Comfort This Summer

The finale of “Succession” might have left die-hard fans wondering what Kendall was going to do with the rest of his life, but everyone else can now turn their attention to the summer television season.

”And Just Like That” (Max) and “The Bear” (FX on Hulu) had their season premieres last week. “Carpool Karaoke: The Series” and “Swagger” (both on Apple TV+) also returned. And “Claim to Fame” and “The Bachelorette” (ABC) return on June 26.

That is just the beginning.

So it’s time to take a plate and a beverage into the living room to catch up on last year’s obsessions and to cultivate new ones.

“The concept of watching television while you eat, first of all, of course has been happening since the invention of television,” said Laura Shapiro, author of “Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America.”

Eating in front of the TV got a huge boost from a company called Swanson in the 1950s. Although Swanson wasn’t the first company to create compartmentalized aluminum tray dinners, in a “stroke of marketing genius,” they coined the phrase “TV dinner,” Ms. Shapiro said.

The old-school TV trays that went hand in hand with those TV dinners can feel too stuffy for some these days. Take a look at how these New Yorkers make sure they are as comfortable as they can be.

A Coffee Table for Two

When Kristen Meinzer and Dean McRobie, both in their 40s, bought their apartment in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, six years ago, they were newlyweds who aspired to be the kind of people who ate dinner together at the dining room table.

So they bought a dining room table. But after years of neglect, that particular piece of furniture has left the building. Ms. Meinzer is a culture critic and host of the podcasts “How To Be Fine” and the “Daily Fail.” Mr. McRobie is a chief technology officer at an upcycled furniture marketplace. “We could literally count on our hands how many times a year we actually sat at the dining room table,” she said

Turns out they weren’t “those people,” Ms. Meinzer said. Instead, they were people who ate dinner on the couch while streaming “Ted Lasso” or “Shrinking,” and they were at peace with it.

The modern living room/dining room setup is not one-size-fits-all — and couples’ reasons for enjoying the experience are also somewhat varied.

Underutilized dining tables, insufficient space or a simple predilection for enjoying dinner and a show at home, have changed the way many New York City couples eat dinner.

Customizing the Experience

Kristen Hartke, 56, said that she and her husband, Rick Weber, 62, like to use nice cocktail glasses, cloth napkins, and silver once owned by Ms. Hartke’s grandmother when they dine in front of the TV in their Yorkville apartment. 

An ottoman, reupholstered by Ms. Hartke, holds a big wooden tray, with the contents and condiments to compliment what’s for supper. The couple, empty nesters, could just as easily sit at their dining table and watch the PBS NewsHour (a pandemic-era ritual that never stopped), but they prefer their living room’s sofa and armchair.

“I like the mixture of formality and informality. We are using nice glassware and nice plates and cloth napkins and all of that stuff, but it doesn’t feel fussy,” said Ms. Hartke.

Space limitations in Jacob and Chelsie Starley’s 450 square-foot apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn have forced the couple to get creative. With no room for a kitchen table and not a lot of room to play with in their living room area, the couple put low bar stools to work.

The Starley’s vintage stools function as individual pseudo tables, perfect for holding the small bowl/plates that Ms. Starley said they enlist for almost everything the couple consumes, from soups to pastas. “Eating off of a flat plate feels a bit too precarious.”

The Starleys, both 30 and co-founders of Astraeus Clarke, a design studio with a focus on light fixtures, think a lot about the way a room’s lighting impacts its ambience. “Most of our lights are dim anyway, but when we’re eating, literally every light is at about 8 percent,” said Mr. Starley, creating a “nice warm glow.”

Interior Upgrades

Furniture and design stores are creating alternatives for nontraditional diners in a range of prices.

Ikea has flexible solutions including the Ronninge bench ($135), which often doubles as a coffee table. The top-selling Trulstorp coffee table ($169) may be better suited for eating since its height is adjustable.

Large ottomans and C-tables, which are side tables with cantilevered tops that resemble the letter C, are also popular.

More and more, people are wanting to sit on something comfortable, said Nancy Ruddy, co-founder and executive director of design at CetraRuddy.

Thus, the problem to solve is: “How do you make dining a positive experience without worrying if I have the right height or if I’m going to drip the Szechuan sauce,” said Ms. Ruddy, who designs interiors residential towers her company builds as well as for private clients.

Ms. Ruddy said these days clients are doing much more with large ottomans, which function as serving platforms for food items and dishes, “large enough to put a beautiful tray on or a series of trays.”  She is also seeing more C-tables, which replaced the folding TV trays from an earlier era, rise in popularity in recent years.

Suki LaBarre, the vice president of merchandising and e-commerce at ABC Carpet & Home, also favors the ottoman. “Many New Yorkers use their living rooms for dining to optimize space, so it’s important to have furniture that’s multifunctional without sacrificing comfort or convenience,” Ms. LaBarre wrote in an email.

“I love using a large cocktail ottoman like our Delancey Ottoman ($1,295), which serves as a soft landing for relaxing in front of the TV but can be transformed into a low-top dining table by adding a large tray like our Neon Pink Tray ($350) for an easy, cozy dining experience,” Ms. LaBarre said.