Deacon

Why not ask one of the staff, or the owner himself if he is present, where the restaurant get its table service? Buy the things you want straight from them--if they'll sell to non-restaurateurs.

That would make the peppermills at The Olive Garden the size of Corinthian columns.

Kill two birds with one stone: use the peppermill as a chair leg.

The Little Rock Arkansas Democrat Gazette apparently recommends Alouette's Capers Spaule Star of India The only Arkansas restaurant I can personally vouch for isn't in Little Rock, but in Johnson, just south of Fayetteville. It's called James at the Mill.

Not bad, Whiting. Eloquently put. What I should have said was, "A philosophy of food is BEST expressed through the food itself." People can, of course, articulate their thoughts about food verbally--we do it every day here. But no description of the Grand Canyon can substitute for staring at the Grand Canyon in person. And likewise, as much as I love talking and writing about food, I'd much rather eat it!

I think it's undeniable that Alice Waters, for instance, has a very coherent "philosophy of food." It isn't the kind of thing that would be expressed in some academic treatise, but you'd be able to learn it by eating at Chez Panisse. Anyone who starts an entirely new genre of food has to be said to have her own "philosophy" of it. But the language it's expressed in isn't English or French or German--it's not linear and verbal, it's a gustatory "language." There are ingredients combined into dishes just as words are shaped into paragraphs. There are appetizers (introductions, forewords), entrees (chapters), and desserts (conclusions, afterwords). Some ideas are epigrammatic, pithy one-liners, like a one-or-two-bite amuse bouche. Some are whimsical and light-hearted, others are grimly serious. Some philosophers are direct and to the point, and some can drone on ALL EVENING. I do think food at the highest levels, like art or architecture at the highest levels, can use a kind of non-verbal language that expresses coherent ideas. I mean, what about "less is more"? What about "make it new"? What about "dare to be naive"?

Good question. People I respect dress at about the same level I do, for the places we go. I'm not going wear ripped clothes to a restaurant as some kind of psychic vengeance against my absent parents. OTOH, I dislike ties. And I've never been turned away (yet!) because of the way I've been dressed, even from places that expect a tie.

I bet if Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise showed up at ADNY the staff would let him in with smiles on their faces even if he were wearing a loincloth. I have the kind of fanatic egalitarianism about restaurant attire that comes from a lifetime of eating in restaurants with my superannuated parents, who were old even when they were young. They customarily make comments like "Look at that guy over there in the Bermuda shorts" or "Doesn't he look cute with his hat on backwards?" A lifetime of that will have you cheering for the guy in the tank top as he eats his meal. Usually I'm concentrating so diligently on the food and on what the other people at the table are saying that I never even NOTICE the people at other tables. Having said that, I do tend to automatically dress reasonably nicely: nice slacks and jacket, usually, at most places, but not a tie. My pet peeve is the guy who parks diagonally across two handicapped spaces in his Cadillac. Which I ALSO got from dining with my father, who uses his fraudulent handicapped rear-view-mirror-hanger as if it makes his car invisible.

Cafe Chardonnay Cafe L'Europe (?) Chez Jean-Pierre 100 South Ocean (?) Renato's (?) for hotel restaurants: Ritz-Carlton Four Seasons Ocean Grand anything at The Breakers Best leads I can think of. Hope they will be of some help.