Here is the best piece of advice nobody gives families looking for a care home in Bath. Book the visit for half past twelve. Most tours happen mid morning, when the lounges are tidy and the biscuits are out, and you learn almost nothing. Turn up at lunch and you see the place working. Food is the one part of daily life in a care home that is impossible to stage, which makes it the most honest thing you will look at all day.

Why lunch tells you so much

A care home serves around a thousand meals a week. Nothing else happens with that frequency, and nothing else depends so completely on the whole place running well. The kitchen, the timing, the way the dining room is set up and the way the team moves around it all have to work together three times a day.

It is also the moment your loved one will look forward to most. Your loved one, living alone before moving in, has often stopped cooking properly, eaten at odd hours and spent whole days without company. A good dining room gives all of that back in one go.

What to look at while you are there

Look at whether the dining room feels like a dining room. Tablecloths, proper crockery, salt and pepper on the table, people sitting together rather than in a row facing the television. The homes that get this right have decided it matters.

Look at whether there is a choice, and whether the choice is real. A menu with two options is fine. A menu where your loved one can say they do not fancy either and be offered something else is better.

Listen to the room. A dining room with conversation in it is a dining room where people know each other. Quiet is not always a bad sign, but it is worth noticing.

Watch how help is offered to those who need it. Done well, it looks unhurried and almost invisible, and the person being helped is still part of the conversation at the table.

Then ask the practical questions. What happens if your loved one is hungry at four in the afternoon, or wakes at night, or simply does not want to come down for breakfast at the same time as everyone else. The answers tell you how much of the day is built around people rather than around a timetable.

Ask to stay for lunch yourself

Most homes will happily feed you, and the ones that hesitate have told you something. Eating there is also the single easiest thing you will ever do to understand what daily life is like.

It matters for later too. When your loved one has moved in, being able to come for Sunday lunch together turns a visit into something closer to normal family life, which is worth a great deal to both of you.

The rest of what you are choosing

Food is a brilliant indicator, but it is an indicator of something bigger.

Residential care provides safety, companionship and professional support in a warm and welcoming community, where residents can leave their worries behind, build meaningful relationships and rediscover enjoyment in everyday life.

That is the actual offer, and it is a long way from the picture many families carry around. They are communities designed to provide a level of care and reassurance that cannot always be achieved at home.

Doing the research before you visit

Start with carehome.co.uk. The reviews there are written by relatives of the people living in each home and are independently verified, so reading a year of them tells you more about daily life than any brochure. Food comes up constantly in reviews, which is useful, because families notice it.

Inspection reports published online by the Care Quality Commission are worth reading alongside those reviews for a fuller picture. A newly opened home may not have been inspected yet, so the absence of a report is not in itself a concern.

A Bath advantage

One thing worth asking about locally is what happens outside the building. Bath is a small city with a great deal within reach, and a home that organises proper trips out, to the gardens, a cafe, the shops, is a home that has thought about life rather than only about care.

Ask what went on last month, not what is possible in principle. The answer is usually very telling, and it is the kind of question a care team enjoys being asked.

Book it for half twelve

Visit twice if you can, once at lunch and once late in the afternoon, and take your parent with you if they are able to come. Their reaction at the table will tell you more than any brochure, and more than you will.