Dining is like going to the theater.  Cooking for the public is like acting.  The show must go on.  If the chef’s mother dies, we should not taste tears in the béarnaise.

WHEN HE WAS YOUNG, Matthew developed an affection for the martini well before he ever drank one, an affection that came in part from watching William Powell and Myrna Loy down them in the Thin Man movies and in part from his careful study of Esquire, the text from which he hoped to learn sophistication.  The martini seemed to be an essential item among the equipment of a sophisticated adult.  When Matthew began drinking them, at Harvard, he was still only an aspirant to adulthood, and by the time he had actually attained adulthood the martini had become something of an anachronism.  For quite a while the young didn’t drink them, didn’t even aspire to drink them, as, perhaps, they no longer aspired to sophistication or adulthood.  Matthew began to wonder whether, if the martini was an anachronism, sophistication was also an anachronism, adulthood wasn’t, too, and Matthew as well.  Now, however, according to what Matthew reads in newspapers and magazines, the martini is making a comeback, and the testimony of his own eyes tells him that it’s true, but his ears tell him that the martini revival is something of a joke.  People always seem to be ordering gag martinis, with a jalapeño pepper or a cornichon instead of an olive or a twist of lemon, and when he orders a martini with “an olive” he usually gets three, but at least he no longer feels as conspicuous ordering one.  He wouldn’t feel conspicuous at all if he didn’t think that his graying hair marks him as a member of an earlier generation of martini drinkers, a humorless bunch.

Reservations Recommended is published in paperback by Picador, a division of St. Martin’s Press, at $12.00.

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Reservations Recommended is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogues, settings, and businesses portrayed in it are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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First published by Crown Publishers, Inc., 201 East 50th Street, New York, New York 10022. Member of the Crown Publishing Group.

Now available in paperback from Picador USA, a division of St. Martin’s Press.

For information about publication rights outside the U. S. A., audio rights, serial rights, screen rights, and so on, e-mail Alec “Nick” Rafter, the author’s earnest agent.

The illustration at the top of the page is an adaptation of an illustration by Stewart Rouse that first appeared on the cover of the August 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions. The boy at the controls of the aerocycle doesn’t particularly resemble Peter Leroy—except, perhaps, for the smile.