Adam Reiner

You'd be served the type of like, you know, whatever meal was on offer that night, but it wouldn't necessarily be choice.

So I actually think that that's one of the reasons why restaurants have become so popular over the last few centuries is because there is that sort of sense of customizability about it, where these restaurants are really have become designed to try to deliver an experience for you that's very personalized.

If you love

you know, to eat steaks.

You can find a place that's really going to blow you away with steak.

If you love pasta, you can go to a wonderful Italian restaurant with fresh pasta.

But the idea that that is somehow something that has always existed in American society is really not quite true.

It is.

There was a hiatus.

So it recently kind of reopened with like new ownership that's also kind of connected to the former family that owned it.

But it hasn't been continuously open.

But yes, you're right.

It is still open.

I think it was more gradual.

What I really found most in terms of like the connection between restaurant history and today's modern restaurants, I think you find in the post World War II period, this kind of proliferation of these like elegant French restaurants where there's a sense of drama to the point where I think modern restaurant goers would seek out restaurants as a form of entertainment.

which may have not necessarily been something that they were looking at before.

So you would go to a place like the Four Seasons restaurant, which opened in 1959, or you would go to a restaurant like a Le Pavillon, which was kind of a French import that arrived stateside during the World's Fair in 1939.

And there was a sense that you would have like a flambe banana dessert at your table.

And all of a sudden, you know, dining out became something that wasn't just something to nourish you, but it was also something that can entertain you.

And I certainly feel like in today's world,