Gastro A History of Restaurants: The First Time We Sat at a Table That Wasn't Ours
The table was long, wooden, and not yours. Beside you sat a man whose name you didn't know, smelling of horse and road dust, eating from the same bowl as you. No one asked what you'd like for dinner. The meal was whatever had been cooked that day - served at noon, on a bench, in a room thick with smoke and other people's voices. This wasn't hospitality. It was logistics: travelers had to eat, horses had to rest, and the roadside inn solved both problems at once, without asking about taste.
