What Is Hospitality? The Current Answer Doesn’t Work.
The New York Times
The host-guest relationship puts all the onus on the server, particularly during the pandemic, and points to the dysfunction at the heart of the business.
One of my last restaurant meals before the shutdowns started last year was at Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco. I waited on the street by a fishy-smelling puddle until I was waved toward a seat at the well-worn counter. Crushed between two strangers on a wobbly stool, I happily ate as much fresh, sweet, cold Dungeness crab meat as I could. Happily, because the server across the bar was making me feel comfortable and cared for, safe and unhurried, though I can’t say exactly how he did this. Unlike service, which is technical and easy to describe, hospitality is abstract, harder to define. It can’t be summed up in a checklist. It can’t be bought. It doesn’t hinge on the quality of the glassware, or the folding of a napkin while you’re in the bathroom. And it can’t be eroded by a slightly-longer-than-you-expected wait, or other little inconveniences, like picking a piece of crab shell off your tongue.
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It’s something turkey often isn’t — undeniably juicy and a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.
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The Homotherium cub was preserved in Siberian permafrost with its dark fur and flesh intact.
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For a century, exoplanet hunters have “discovered” planets around a nearby star, only to retract the claims. But the latest find is for real.
The unidentified patient had recently returned from Africa, where the virus has caused a deadly epidemic, health officials said.
The event produces some of the year’s fastest meteors, although the nearly full moon may make them challenging to spot.
Mr. Musk dug into his companies’ budgets, preferring to cut too much rather than too little and to deal with the fallout later. Under Donald Trump, he is set to apply those tactics to the U.S. government.
Behind the scenes at a Chicago zoo, chimpanzees who spent years entertaining humans are learning to befriend their own kind.
The agency’s top medical official was responding to rumors that Suni Williams had lost an unusual amount of weight during an extended stay in orbit.