• I had dinner over the weekend at the “soft opening” of a buzzy new restaurant, where a pedigreed chef offers an ambitious menu at a price of nearly $40 per entree.
The bartender, asked for a cocktail, spilled rail liquors into a glass with abandon.
The duck arrived so bloody it appeared to have gone from pond to plate without pausing before a heat source. The quail was foul, and the waiter — there was only one, and he spent most of his time attending to a solo diner who appeared to be the chef’s wife — did not know whether they had wines by the bottle or what they might cost.