you go to a restaurant three times in a row and it is each time more enjoyable than the last and on the fourth visit you arrive herding a flock of guests having praised the restaurant in glowing tones and arm-twisted your company from all other dinner choices proposed and it is humiliatingly and heartbreakingly Not To Scratch and even the reasonably delicious digestifs on the house at the end of the meal do not console, the consolation not being for the failed meal nor the chagrin but for your own loss of faith, and the crumbling of that knowldge that you once had but have no more one lovely little staple place where the food will always be familiar and delectable and suitable at a pinch to bring any guest.
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird