Setting the Mood Using Food and Ambiance in Novels

Using Location, Ambiance and Food in novels to set a particular mood is a very useful way to get a point across.  For example, in a Work in Progress I set the scene in Autumn in Greenwich Village in New York City as follows:


The low white clouds masked the new moon giving the night an eerie diffused glow.  Christopher Street’s sidewalks sparkled after the early evening rain.  The water washed the city streets clean of soot and put the distinct smell of autumn in the air.  Until this year, he always loved October. The leaves of the trees planted between the sidewalk and the curb began to change color from green to yellow, then red to brown.  Lights shown through the windows of the apartments; created by the Federal era brownstone houses that lined the street.  Sometimes he saw a fireplace lit from behind the French balconies.  In contrast to the aura of peaceful urban living above the sidewalks, outside, groups of five or six young gay men strolled up the pavement, soon to be followed by posses of ten or more. They shouted and jostled each other passed the famous Stonewall Inn where the first stirring of the Gay Liberation movement began, continued from Christopher, down to West Street and onto the Christopher Street Pier built on the Hudson River.
This description tells the reader what autumn looks like in that part of New York City.  In my novel, A Matter of Trust, Bear Drummond's office portrays the man.
Confident he would remain undisturbed; he set down his briefcase on the king-sized executive chair and walked the few steps from behind the desk to the floor-to-ceiling double hung windows, covered in cherry wood plantation shutters. His large strong hands, with their blunt manicured fingers, absently stroked the burgundy watered silk papering the upper non-brick, portion of the wall. The brick wall bisected from the rich paneling at the bottom by a highly polished, chair rail, carved from the same wood. Donald caressed the smooth texture of the silk as it slid beneath the pads of his fingers. He loved the look, feel, and texture. 

 Setting the scene for Bear suggests that he is a man who likes fine things and may not have always had them.  It tells us something about his character.
In both novels the set decoration acts as a mechanism to convey details of the character of the area in which the book resides.  The passage on Greenwich Villiage portrays the feeling of autumn in New York City while the second passage suggests a certain traditional approach to life for a real estate mogul who deals in modern commercial properties.
In a work already submitted to a publisher, a character is decorating a cake for his lover.  He fusses over the details in a commercial kitchen.  The use of the cake and the fussy way he goes about its decoration suggest a state of nerves not necessarily related to the cake in the scene.  
So the scene, set and food described add to the character you describe as much as the background of a movie set add to the movie.  As the fabled words of a real estate agent describing a properties important qualities, remember Location, Location, Location.