The Table Comes First

It was not the deliciousness of the food-my mother made better burgers- but the overcharge of optimism that made the meal matter. Its excellence involved the removal of the obvious signs of labor, which even then I took to be a benevolent fiction, for the better food at home was a benign good fortune but effortful. You had to have my mom to eat really well, but anyone could come here and share. It was a moment of transformation, lift-off, of anonymity transmuted into intimacy without the obligation of gratitude: you told the menu- bearing woman at the cash register “Four for dinner,” and suddenly, inexplicably, you were in a booth, and there was dinner for four! This sense of being in the unimaginable right place with exactly the right company in the most welcoming of rooms attended by the most considerate of servers-whistling while they worked and candidly eyeing the reward-was a blessing felt there and sought ever since.

-Adam Gopnik, The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food