Happiness is a Day Spent Floating from Restaurant to Restaurant

Back in those days, the only plan penciled in is a lunch at the regular spot with few friends. Unassuming, really. We’re regulars here. The drinks are ordered and the first fleet of starters lands, with the mains soon to follow. The server puts everything in the middle of the table. Everything is a blur of reaching arms, shuffling plates and silverware.

Another round ordered, extended stories from the week gone by, affectionately interrupted with phrases like “You’re hogging the bread basket” and “I didn’t know broccolini had this much potential.” After hours (plural?), we’re all lazily slumped over our chairs, napkins tossed like white flags onto the tablescape. Positively stuffed. Couldn’t eat another thing. It’s finally time to relinquish this corner of the restaurant. We tip generously to atone for loitering and mosey out onto the street.

With plenty of daylight and nowhere to be, we walk in any direction as means to stretch our limbs. Turning onto a familiar block we happen upon the aromas of lemongrass, chiles, and fried rice, wafting out from a store front. Did we know this place had always been here? Should we grab a drink? Table for four please.

Refreshments en route, peeking at the menu. It would be rude not to order something. A wave of collective lunch amnesia cascades over us and the familiar sequence unfolds again. Bowls scraping against the wood, making room for everything we didn’t know we needed to order. More stories and playful arguments, punctuated with groans each time we take a bite of something impossibly good. Another couple hours pass around the clock and it’s dark now. At this point we’re so full we have no choice but to call it a night in deference to the digestive process.

Once again we have fallen victim to the never-ending meal, the endless outing, the reverie of hopping from restaurant to restaurant. Is it gluttony? Is it madness? I think it’s love.

Cait Teegarden works at Resy as the director of growth.