Standing in front of a mirror, staring at myself in a suit I have to wear for a formal dinner, I don’t feel like myself. On a typical night, I’m likely wearing shorts and a sports jersey, eating wings and drinking beer at a nearby bar. Noticing my discomfort, she says, "Restaurants allow us to experience different versions of ourselves." Doubtful at first, I wonder if I really would experience a different version of myself if I stopped complaining and surrendered to the experience.
Arriving for an unusually late dinner, we met her friends from college who had just returned from Spain. They told us how Spain changed them and how they now only eat dinner after 9. She whispers to me that restaurants function as vectors of reproduction—they pass on tradition and a sense of how the world used to be and still is, to some extent. Originating from a particular space and time, each restaurant is an embodiment of culture. From the family-style serving sizes in Chinese restaurants that reflect a collectivist culture to the individual serving sizes at an American hotdog stand, restaurants reveal the world they emerged from. But far from being static snapshots of a moment in history, restaurants today also embody the times in various ways. From QR codes to online reservations, restaurants reproduce both the good and the bad.
Her friends are self-identified foodies. One of them comments on the table being pure oak. Shortly after, another comments on the linen napkins. She tells me the restaurant is an acid trip in the sense that the good and bad are amplified. Like an acid trip, each component matters. One of her friends mentions they heard the owner of the restaurant got into a big fight with their partner about needing to buy expensive paper towels for the restrooms because, if they didn’t, it would compromise their brand. Sensing my irritation with her friends’ concern for trivial things, she puts things in perspective by telling me that everything in the restaurant is an expression of the restaurant.
She points out the controlling restaurateur in the corner: one arm resting on top of the other, stroking their chin, staring blankly into the distance. She says the romanticist in her smiles, knowing that the restaurant remains a place for human error. Her friends are irked that the table next to us got their drinks before we did, despite the fact that we ordered first. While any error is generally regarded as an inconvenience, the disappearance of human error would imply the reterritorialization of the restaurant by computers and algorithms. Perhaps her friends would like that, or perhaps they’d also complain about it. They, like the restaurateur, seem to see the world through what she told me is called a humanist lens. From this vantage point, humans, through reason, can perfect themselves and society. Perhaps it's this pursuit of perfection that will lead to the disappearance of humans as a byproduct of being intolerant of errors.
After they clear away our plates, she says to her friends that eating at a restaurant is like eating on the edge of a cliff; death looms in the form of financial ruin. We laugh at first, but soon agree that the cost of dining out takes away some of the enjoyment. Her friends mention how eating out so often has sort of deflated the entire experience. When the bill comes, I put my card down and tell everyone they can Venmo me.
After saying bye to her friends, she tells me that a restaurant is hardly ever just about eating food. As an event, our experience of the restaurant is philosophical. Sitting at a table on the edge of a cliff, tripping on acid, a not-so-familiar version of myself becomes the medium for culture, both past and present, to express and reproduce itself.
