"A woman emerges from the doorway of a brightly lit coatroom, and takes a step toward us as we approach. She stops, stands politely, smiles a decorous and receptive smile, a smile that gives the impression that she is not only pleased to see us, but subtly basking in our mere proximity…It is the kind of smile that the finest professionals in the service industry all possess in variation, a smile that succeeds, miraculously, because it is on some level genuine."

- A Meal Observed, p. 26