Possible Clues:

• Brightly illuminated
• After fare's cut by pound, drunk’s brightened up
• Pitch isn't black when it's this
• How the ark was illuminated?
• Like actor on stage may be till food is cooked
• Fifty tucking into meat, perhaps flambé, visible in the dark
• Line in cookery books, maybe, was intensely illuminating
• A lot of liquid drunk, with beams all round!