Seven Minutes With the Menu

March twenty-first. The restaurant has about nine seats at the counter and I was the only one who came alone, which I did not fully think through until I sat down and realized there was nothing to look at sideways when I did not understand something.

I had walked past this place probably forty times. It is on the same block as the dry cleaner's I photographed in October 2014, which felt, privately, like a sign of some kind, or at least a reminder that I had been looking at this neighborhood in pieces for years without ever walking into half of it. A coworker had mentioned the counter specifically, not the restaurant generally, the way people talk about a particular seat on a train. I looked it up. I did not make a reservation for three weeks. When I finally went, a Thursday evening in March, I carried the folded menu for approximately seven minutes before the chef, without making it a thing, asked if I had been here before.

the moment before the first piece, I genuinely did not know where to look

I had not. He asked if he could just take care of it. I said yes in a voice that came out more relieved than I intended. What followed was eleven courses, I think, I lost count after six, each one placed on the small ceramic plate in front of me with almost no comment, which turned out to be the right amount of comment. The thing I was not expecting was how much concentration it required. Not in a difficult way. Just in the way that something in front of you, made carefully, asks you to pay attention or you will miss it. I paid attention.

seven minutes. I held this menu for seven minutes.

I walked home afterward with the paper menu folded in my coat pocket, which is maybe a strange thing to keep, but it was the first one and I had held it for seven minutes and it felt like it had earned a drawer. The between-itches feeling I wrote about in January, that patient quality, I think that walk home was in the same register. Something quiet and complete. I did not Instagram it until now because I could not figure out what to say about it except: I did not know what I was doing and it was one of the better evenings I have had in a while.