#frayn

“And restaurants — particularly expensive ones — are theatres pure and simple. The public section is stagily decorated — dramatic lighting, portable greenery, perhaps gilt and mirrors — or got up to look like a grotto, a riverboat, or a Turkish brothel. Programmes are brought round; music may be played. And behind the padded swing door, as we are agreeably aware, there is another world of white tiles and harsh fluorescent lighting, where sweating cooks toil with a professional disenchantment equal to any stagehand's. Out through the swing doors hurry men in stage costume — dickeys, perhaps, or Spanish gypsy kit, or French matelot outfits. (At one restaurant in New York they wear shortie togas.) They walk in special waiter-like ways, twirl bottles of claret to show the label as if performing a sleight-of-hand, sincerely recommend whatever we are going to order anyway, care as deeply about our tastes and whims as Gary Cooper cares about the rule of law in High Noon. Their wives give them canned spaghetti at home, we know. They have bad feet — they came up from Brooklyn on the subway wearing open-necked check shirts —behind the swing doors they pick their ears and curse us. But that's restaurant business — the heartbreak behind the dickey, the tears behind the service. One day waiters will rise as far above food in the public's estimation as actors have above plays. Crowds will wait for them outside the service entrance each night, screaming and pushing forward autograph books. The gossip columnists will get on to them, revealing to our deep, contrary satisfaction that the favourite food of the head-waiter at the Claribelle is doughnuts and soda-pop, and that the sommelier at the Aspidistra passes out on one dry Martini. It’ll put all the fun back into eating.”