Recession Makes Restaurants Eager to Serve You
“If you eat out regularly in New York, you’ve noticed a different reception, an altered mood,” Frank Bruni writes. “Extreme solicitousness tinged with outright desperation.”
Bruni goes over the many ways in which restaurants have hugged him lately — reservationists begged him to come another night when one night was booked, hosts greeted him as if he were an old friend — but perhaps the best illustration of desperation is the picture above: Mario Batali, Sirio Maccioni (Le Cirque), and Jean-Georges Vongerichten posing in sandwich boards.
