Ar·ray — Sur la Table
Savoring another year in beautiful communion; Off-Menu launch
Suggested audio pairing:
Welcome back to another Ar·ray. Today’s show is a holiday season special: a photo essay centered around the table. It is a love letter in equal parts to the act of dining out, the romance of waiting, restaurant interiors, and finding communion.
Also on this theme, a personal announcement - my talented friend Sophie is launching Off-Menu, an independent, community-driven magazine exploring the world of food & drink. The Issue 1 launch party is tomorrow night at Rodeo in Brooklyn. I’ll be there - hope to see some of you there too.
Having shared nearly a decade of friendship across two continents, I’ve found a beautiful, creative kindred spirit in Sophie. Watching her manifest Off-Menu from an idea over our dinner in Chez Ma Tante back in February into the gorgeous print copies today has been endlessly inspiring. I’m honored to be writing a piece on 81 Eating Club (by the incredible Eric) for Off-Menu’s upcoming Issue 2. Stay tuned.
For now, sit back and enjoy the show.
Love, LK
Sur La Table
Curated by Lyndsey Kong
It’s no secret dining out is a core part of living in New York.
Go solo or convivial. The restaurants for seeing and being seen. The bars to disappear in. The other bars for people watching. The nighthawks. The seats that perfectly envelop. The communion tables. The third spaces. The soups to known cure all grief, every time.
Earlier this year, I attended a group dinner at Parcelle Chinatown with NY dining veteran
, the founder of Resy, Eater, and now Blackbird (checkout and tap in at your favorite restaurant). Ben shared his theory that restaurants are either 1) clubs (in the business of saying no), 2) diners (in the business of saying yes), or 3) art projects (not a business at all).I’m incredibly grateful to have spent a lot of time this year in all three establishment types around the world. And now in New York, as the weather gets colder, the sun sets earlier, even more of the city’s social and emotional gravity recenters to indoor hospitality. To dine out is a wondrous suspension of disbelief, really - that just for a few hours, you can escape the frigid quotidian and transcend into a warmer sublime. Slow down. Break bread. Sip wine by the candlelight.
So order something. Sit back and wait. Indulge in the theatricality of it all - lone flowers in a glass vase. Mirrors and frames. Is it the sculptural, subliminal, or the spiritual - what moves you? What brings you here? Who are you waiting for? Who makes you want to stay?
Perhaps it is the romance in waiting. To want, to wait―like the bud of a flower on the brink of bloom―to linger in the liminal space between anticipation and consummation.
We want to eat all the other objects of desire. The beautiful is that which we desire without wishing to eat it. We desire that it should be.
We have to remain quite still and unite ourselves with that which we desire yet do not approach.
We unite ourselves to God in this way: we cannot approach him.
Distance is the soul of the beautiful.
― Simone Weil on Beauty, from Gravity and Grace
Linger longer, because every exquisitely made meal, once consumed, will only be a memory.
As New York Times movie critic Alissa Wilkinson wrote in her review of The Taste of Things, “At the center of everything good in the world is a bittersweet kernel: All things pass away.”
So savor, savor, savor.
I think an interesting film is something that you can have an aftertaste. Sometimes when you look at the film, you might not get it at the first time, but somehow it lingers.
― Wong Kar-wai in an interview
Like Wong Kar-wai’s films, good meals have an aftertaste, too. It’s rarely about the food for me. It’s the longing to hold onto the memory of the feeling―love, contentment, bliss, the want for nothing―however fleeting, that it was all real and raw and good in the moment, however long since past.
The attitude of looking and waiting is the attitude which corresponds with the beautiful. As long as one can go on conceiving, wishing, longing, the beautiful does not appear. That is why in all beauty we find contradiction, bitterness and absence which are irreducible.
― Simone Weil on Beauty, from Gravity and Grace
And more is to come, rest assured. Just wait.
It will be here before you know it.
I hope you find yourself in communion around the table this time of year.
Thank you for reading Taming the Light. If you enjoyed this piece, please like or share it with a friend - it would mean a lot! You can always email me at lyncnyl@gmail.com, or find me on Instagram @lyndxey.
In case you missed it:
love notes 03 | craving, devouring, savoring
When we speak about love, we mean the desire for beauty. — Marsilio Ficino
