A Table for One, Requested

The best seat in the house goes to the person who came to eat, not to negotiate.

26 August 2026

The counter at seven, a plate of anchovies under a slick of butter, a glass of cold Muscadet sweating onto the wood. Nobody asks me how the fish is. I already know: I ordered it because I wanted it, not because it split the difference between someone's shellfish allergy and someone else's dislike of bones.

Company is negotiation. You share plates, you pace yourself to the slowest talker, your risotto sits going stiff while a story about a mortgage finds its ending. Alone, the food arrives at its own temperature and gets your whole attention — the guanciale fat gone glassy, the salt sitting a shade too high at the edge of the sauce, the moment a peach stops being firm.

So I book it deliberately, and I ask for the good seat. Pity the ones who need an audience to taste anything.