John Ralston Saul, writing in The Doubter's Companion: > Restaurants, until recently, were places of refuge for people > excluded from the mainstream or se

John Ralston Saul, writing in The Doubter's Companion: > Restaurants, until recently, were places of refuge for people > excluded from the mainstream or seeking to escape it—poor students, > aging unmarried men not rich enough to have themselves fed at home, > richer men seeking sex not wives, and the proverbial artists leading > their irresponsible lives. Over the last half-century, restaurants > have risen in importance to fill the void left by the decline of the > old public celebrations. They now provide the leading forums of public > participation. He's right - restaurants are a relatively modern convenience / provide an arguably regrettable function, and we'd do well to not assume that their implementation is currently ideal, or demands preservation. Whether this approach is inherently better or worse _in totality_ is a somewhat irrelevant question.