Stray remembrance

Posted on | January 13, 2009 | No Comments

Montmartre, originally uploaded by John Althouse Cohen.

Yesterday as I was eating lunch in the darkened, quiet restaurant, I remembered when I was a teenager in Oklahoma. Going out for lunch or dinner with a few friends to a “grown-up” restaurant without our parents, getting waited on, and paying for our own meal lent a specialness to the outing. Especially if the restaurant were quiet and dark with big booths where my friends and I could hunker down and share stories without everyone’s watchful eyes and ears intruding. Especially if the food was plentiful, savory, and yet not too expensive.

I really dislike restaurants that are too bright, too open, too loud, with food that is over priced and not very good.

Give me a dark cave of a leather booth, a large beer, food that makes my mouth sing, and music just loud enough to drown out the conversation in the next booth but quiet enough that I can hear my dinner partner.

And if a booth is not available, give me a table on the deck overlooking a view. And if I can put my back against the wall and unobtrusively observe the swirl of humanity, all the better.

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