"Few dishes are as satisfying and elemental as a simply grilled sea bream, served at a a plain wooden table with checked napkin and chunky scuffed cutlery. The flesh had just the right consistency, with no additions beyond a little flaky sea salt, some finely chopped parsley, and a dash of lemon...
Our ostensible reason for wanting to travel to the new restaurant in the centre of town is that we feel like having a bite to eat. But a substantial, perhaps even decisive part of our desire has a less mundane, more subtly psychological basis: we want to absorb the values of the restaurant itself. We want (in some vague sense) to become like it: relaxed, dignified, convivial, content with simplicity, in touch with nature, at ease with others. There are the abstract values that we semi-consciously detect in the dishes, the service and the decor, and which we are confusedly seeking to bolster ourselves through the ingestion of a sea bream with chopped parsley and a side order of burrata with lentils and basil oil."
-The News, a Users Manual
