Restaurants

I am a regular at no restaurant or café but have been going to restaurants all over the world for well over a half a century. Some have been memorable, but usually for the food and the company. Rarely for either one alone.

 A restaurant is a place where people pay to sit and eat meals that are cooked and served on the premises. That is the dictionary definition. It is incredibly cold and stark and makes one think that he should never go to a restaurant. One could apply the definition to one’s own home. In that case, the payment occurs before the meal, in the form of household management and upkeep, rather than after when a check is presented. More on this later.

However, restaurants also are one of the oldest businesses of the human race. Not long ago, I read a book entitled “The Restaurant: a 2000-year history of dining out.” It is by William Sitwell, a well-known chef and food critic in Great Britain. It is beautifully written, informative, entertaining, and easy to read. A page-turner, as you can imagine. Here is a description taken from Amazon:

“Have you ever wondered where the first coffee shop sprang up, or when the sushi conveyor belt was invented? Unbelievably, the global history of the dining establishment has never been told―until now. Journeying 2,000 years into the past, acclaimed food critic and writer William Sitwell artfully traces the earliest origins of the widespread cultural practice of eating out, from its most basic to most sophisticated forms. Whether he’s traversing the inns and taverns of Pompeii before its destruction in A.D. 79, witnessing the tumultuous emergence of fine dining during the French Revolution, or recounting the mid-twentieth-century invention of the taco machine in New York City, Sitwell’s engaging prose gives readers a front-row seat to the restaurant experience across cultures and millennia. He follows the fashions that shape the way we dine, meeting the restaurateurs of today and yesterday whose establishments shaped society for good or ill. And after offering a wry history of the world through the prism of the eatery, he ponders its exciting future.”

Now you know why I know that there was a great restaurant in Pompeii. There also were graffiti on the wall talking about one of the waitresses. You will have to read the book to know what was said.

Restaurants from the beginning were places to gather, eat, drink, talk, share experiences, and exchange the news of the day. The idea of a favorite restaurant is not new, nor is our having a relationship with a favorite restaurant. So, why don’t I have one? It seems everyone else does. It probably has to do with the way I grew up. It was during the end of the depression and through World War II. There was not a lot of money and people did not go to restaurants. We lived in single-family dwellings, as they now are described, and the focus of living was the suburban home rather than downtown. Going to college was similar, eating in the cafeteria rather than restaurants, and medical school was the same. When we were married, we had neither money nor time, and tended to eat at home fairly frugally. It was only when I went into the army and actually was paid for working, that we started going to restaurants. In fact, we went to several steakhouses in Texas during basic training because we could now afford to do so, and we enjoyed the unusual experience. Prior to that time, going out for pizza was a big evening.

Thereafter, we tended to stay at home because we felt that raising a family as a unit with the home as its center was important. Restaurants did not play into that model, although as a family we went to restaurants far more often than either of us did as children or adolescents. The idea of going to restaurants never was inculcated into my life.

Nevertheless, in the course of life and work, I have been in many restaurants and have formed definite opinions about them as places to eat and as a part of life. There are a few that remain in my memory for particular reasons and at the end you will see a common theme.

Kostas – One of my tasks when working for the local newspaper on Saturday was to go out for sandwiches. It was about a half a block to the Kostas restaurant, filled with odors of cooking oil, French fries, and cooking meat. Even though it was a restaurant run by Greek owners and workers, it served hamburgers, meatloaf, potatoes, etc., because it catered to middle American, lower middle-class tastes. It was a fascinating experience for me, because I met and talked with people I had never experienced. Occasionally, after working at the newspaper, I would go there on my own, have a hamburger, and absorb the culture.

Leon and Jimmy’s – This was a bar near Xavier University in Cincinnati, OH, with little to recommend it. It was a place to drink beer, talk, and philosophize as best one can in college. It was not just a window into that segment of society that spent its time in bars, but a place where I could experience that society personally. It was the non-academic growth and development that everyone experiences going away to college. I was young enough to think it a great place.

A Coffee Shop in Colon, Panama - The Colonel was an interesting man. He was a true Castilian, in that he was short, strong, and determined while retaining a character of politeness, charm, and concern for others. He was an officer in the Spanish Army of Africa which was commanded by General Francisco Franco. When Franco declared a civil war against the Republicans in 1936, and began the Spanish Civil War, he flew back from Africa to Spain with some trusted officers and the Colonel was among them. When Franco won that war and became dictator, the Colonel, who was part of the Franco government resigned and entered medical school. His reasons for emigrating are not clear but it seemed to me that his views of how one treats humanity were quite different from those of the Franco regime. He would not have been comfortable in Franco’s Spain.

Colonel Cabezas was the commander of the Surgeons Section in the 8th Special Forces Group and, for some reason, he and I hit it off rather well. I suspect it was because I recognized the extraordinary amount of history that he had experienced and was interested. We would go downtown Colon and have coffee at a small coffee shop that, in many respects, was the Panamanian equivalent of the Kostas sandwich shop in Hamilton, OH. It was filled with local men drinking small cups of espresso and eating bocas (small snacks). He and I would sit at the counter, order, then throw back an espresso, and talk. The customers were all male, sitting around, talking intently about politics and life. It was unclean and brusque, but you could sit for hours undisturbed. We talked about the Spanish Civil War, politics, the Alliance for Progress (a US AID project for Latin America at the time), and life generally. He seemed to want to spend time with someone who perhaps could understand the turmoil and tragedy of his own life. The coffee shop should have been closed by the public health service but the quality of our conversations more than made up for the health risk.

 Restaurant in Piraeus, Greece - The Port of Piraeus is the chief seaport of Athens located on the western coast of the Aegean Sea. It also is a short taxi ride from Athens and one of the more romantic places to have dinner in Greece. During our cruise to the Greek Islands, my wife and I took that taxi ride. It was an idyllic evening, with a fresh fish dinner and a good bottle of Greek wine while seated outside on the shore of the Aegean Sea. It was our first evening of this type and the setting, history, and ambience made a wonderful beginning. After dinner, I asked the waiter for the label from the wine bottle and it became the first label on our bar at home.

Important Dining of Another Type – It is the life experience associated with the dining that makes the occasion important.The dining companions and the conversation are the critical features.

Family Dinners begin with babies at the table and end with adults all around. These are where bonds are created, even though they include disagreements and the occasional dinner that does not go well. The incremental gain in bonding and love over the years establishes that you are not only family but also best friends. The adult-child relationship shifts slowly to a collegial one that lasts a lifetime. Family dinners define lives and orient them. The fact that they are in a home, rather than an elaborate hotel overlooking the ocean, underscores the importance of companions rather than location.

Family Gatherings are the logical extensions of family dinners. The group is larger, and the bonding takes some time, but, as it increments, it becomes a new edifice. Our family gatherings are cases in point: there have been many, they moved from home to home as time passed, and they created an extended family. The relationships tightened into a close-knit group, and the glue was good will and grandchildren.

So, you have my view of restaurants and all they imply. A good dining experience is a meaningful life experience, no matter the restaurant or its location. Companions and conversations are the keys. Anything else is eating, even if it has sauce bordelaise.