Sharing restaurant memories

It’s been over three months since I dined in a restaurant, and it will likely be several more before I feel comfortable doing so again. More than not having to cook, I miss being able to converse with friends and celebrate milestones with family. Restaurants are places where memories are made: birthday parties, first dates (bad or good), and other special occasions often include dining out. When restaurants were shuttered earlier this year, we lost more than just a location to eat a meal. As stated in a recent NY Times article in which several food writers shared their favorite restaurant memories, we also lost a “theater of experience.”

Ruth Reichl, Samantha Irby, Alexander Chee, Adam Platt, Sloane Crosley, Bill Buford, and Carmen Maria Machado all provided segments for the article. These aren’t stories about fancy meals as much as images that stuck with the diners for a variety of reasons. Reichl recounts a family meal in a French restaurant where her son ended up making a new friend, Irby tells us of an hours-long wait at a newly-opened Cheesecake Factory, and Crosley regales us with a story about tiramisu and mistaken identity.

As these stories show, dining out is much more than just the food we eat: it is the company we share, the circumstances we encounter, and the emotions that accompany the dinner. I’ll never forget eating in a cozy pub in Penrith, UK. The food was excellent, but although the delicious Cumberland sausage is seared into my memory, I cherish more the new friends we made that evening. No doubt my next restaurant meal will be memorable in some way – I will just have to wait a bit to enjoy it.