You may have heard that Balthazar is back. The legendary brasserie reopened this March after nearly a year boarded up in plywood. Ever since, the tableau that has formed there night after night could be described as a pulsating embodiment of New York, still got it: over martinis, moules frites, and steak tartare, a collective exhalation. Customers dance in the dining room. They leave flirtatious postcards for Keith McNally, the restaurant’s influential owner. They wonder how soon they can return.
Meanwhile, in London, it’s impossible to get into chef Ruth Rodgers’ River Café until November. If Instagram is any indication, travelers to Rome seem to be descending on the likes of Roscioli and Armando al Pantheon with even greater fervor than during most summers. Copenhagen, known mostly for its forward-looking restaurants, has seen a boom of new openings with old-school leanings, from Maison to Silberbauers; they’re packed. Chef Alain Passard, who opted to keep his beloved Paris restaurant just down the block from the Musée Rodin dark for the entirety of the pandemic, will welcome guests again on September 8th. As of this writing, the earliest availability for a party of two is in the middle of October.
It doesn’t take a business-school case study to understand why. Whether it’s a matter of their democratic chic, dependable comforts, or classic sensibilities—in some cases, all of the above—these restaurants offer an appealing alternative to the list-topping establishments diners around the world might not have the patience to visit even if they have the means—and it’s never been easier to forget about chasing the privilege of tasting a culinary auteur’s latest creations. L’Arpège is something of an outlier in this regard, but it’s the loosest three-star in Paris. No jackets are required. The room is almost always filled with regulars. If you ask, they will cook you what you like.
Some writers have recently described similar yearnings. Under the headline “The New Thrill of Old Restaurants,” Grub Street editor Alan Sytsma wrote about the beauty of New York’s storied standbys: “I’ve missed antipasti and glasses of rosé in King’s perfectly cheerful back dining room. I’ve missed martinis inside Walker’s and burgers inside Melon’s. I’ve missed somewhat sheepishly asking for another plate of bread, and then another, at Roman’s as my table mops up whatever sauce is lingering in an almost-finished bowl of pasta.” I hear him, especially on Melon’s. I grew up going there, even though the host was one of the few hospitality professionals on the Upper East Side who did not accept my fake I.D. (I wonder if he remembers me; I hope he’s still there.) I don’t think that a burger at Andrew Tarlow’s 22-year-old restaurant Diner, in Williamsburg, has ever tasted better. A few weeks ago, I ran into the living room of my apartment to tell my girlfriend that I Sodi could finally seat diners indoors again. Landing a reservation at that tiny, enduringly impenetrable West Village restaurant—whose chef-owner, Rita Sodi, seems to prefer to let the food do the talking for her—filled me with a sense of anticipation that I used to get from booking a very different style of restaurant.
If the wider enthusiasm I’m trying to capture doesn’t quite point to the return of the restaurateur, there’s certainly a renewed appreciation for the absence of ego. For a generosity of feeling. For the assurance that you will be fed well, surrounded by people who, like you, could really use a good time. At least that’s the case with me. I’ll soon travel to Spain, where the avant-garde continues to thrive like it’s 1999. Gastronauts keep telling me I have to visit Quique Dacosta’s new restaurant in Madrid, but I’m too busy figuring out if I can get on a later flight on the last day of our trip to eat the storied Sunday cocido at Lhardy. I wouldn’t call it a destination table, but there’s a reason it’s been around since 1839.
Obviously, many have always looked for restaurants with staying power and everything I have described thus far could be the result of recency bias: We really didn’t know how good we had it. I might go back to envying the frequent fliers who travel the world in search of the next great tasting menu sooner than I want to believe. We’ll see. What I can say for certain is that this month, when I visit Los Angeles for the first time in over a year, I’ll be eating at Matsuhisa, which opened in 1987. Purer, more exacting sushi can easily be found elsewhere nowadays. But I long for the restaurant for a couple of reasons beyond its iconic, crowd-pleasing menu. Despite chef Nobu Matsuhisa’s schedule tending to an international empire, you somehow can almost always find him there greeting regulars.
Dining at his endearingly weathered flagship, where the art on the walls includes a pair of spray-painted dolphins floating through the cosmos, is still no bargain, but like a lot of the spots I’ve been visiting lately, I can count on it to deliver certain pleasures. For one thing, I seem to always want to add another friend to the reservation at the last minute, and it’s never a problem.
