Servers moved up and down and all around, swerving past tables and gliding by bar chairs as they dropped off towering platters and sparkling glasses to the suitors and suitresses of the very fine establishment we find ourselves looking into. Aromas of every ingredient and herb floated through the air, clinging to the lingering contrails of the kitchen's latest delicacies. A trained nose - and eye - might be able to differentiate the grilled from the sautéed, the seared from the poached.

 

When servers kicked open the kitchen doors, an orchestra of hustling cooks and clattering kitchenware and indistinct conversation overlapped with the clamor of the diner and the steady pitter patter of the rain outside; and it rained incessantly. The downpour beat against the windows and plucked the umbrellas of huddled passersby waiting for the tram that came once every 22 minutes and only every 22 minutes. The evening conductor, who grew up one city over, was very proud of this fact and, for thirty years, had never once missed his stop by more than 13 seconds.

 

Compared to this lively, bustling, clamorous diner, the outside was a melancholic and rather somber affair. Night had fallen and the overcast of rain clouds had submerged the world in various shades of amethyst and indigo. And the lights! They made one feel as if they wandered into The Boulevard Montmartre at Night. There! the embers glowed during the doorman’s patient drag on his cigarette; there! the pale-yellow neon sign (two tints lighter than a Sicilian lemon) of the diner's namesake reflected onto the water below; and there! the street-lamps lining the avenue cast an amber haze in every direction, their ornate bulbs flowering over flooded sidewalks. Every few minutes this Pissarro was interrupted when a cab or vespa would cautiously pass, their engines purring and windshields turning as they cut through the seven seas of puddles that plagued both sidewalk and street. But now we must go back inside.

 

This was no ordinary diner. It had the hospitality of the Roger La Grenouille in Paris, the nuance of Vienna’s famous Steirereck, the range of Tokyo’s Sarashina Horii; it was one of those places you could smell, could feel, could taste, the moment your hand touched the door handle. This place, of course, was held to the same vintage and standard of the establishments listed prior and imported food and drink from only the finest suppliers across the world.

 

Here, a heart could learn anything it desired. Languages of every nation met in the air; French collided with Italian, Korean shook hands with Austrian, English coalesced with Spanish. In one corner, people whispered about what horse to wager on in the weekend race, in the other, they gossiped about the escapades of parties from generations past. In the kitchen, the chef and his brigade with all their profanities could teach you every subtle lesson and pleasure a flavor could produce. Men and women of all ages and sizes, all communities and ethnicities met in this diner, entering and leaving on the whim of their own fancy.

 

Down the nave of our culinary eden was a half-wall dividing the dining room (on the left) from the bar (on the right). The dining room was fortified with cognac-colored booths and free standing tables that were turned in so many different directions even Marco Polo would have had trouble charting North, South, East, and West. These booths were made from imported leather which, over the years, had worn and become distressed - a telling sign of frequently visited establishments. Embroidered into that worn leather on the front corner of each booth was the diner’s logo, about the size of a watch face and stitched into each seat on the orders of the diner’s founder over a century prior. If you preferred the aisle, your thigh might rest over it. 

 

The tables themselves, though hidden under their capes of linen, were a dark red oak, infused with aromatic balms and scratched from years upon years (upon years) of use. Many of the regulars had a favorite seat, and if one were to study the comings and goings of the diner for long enough, they would know the meals and the quirks of each guest.

 

As we have already stated, a bar stood to the right of the half-wall. This bar - crafted from mahogany and laced in gold - stood guard over the wine cellar, and the sommelier (we need not concern ourselves with his name) stood guard over the bar. This sommelier had the ever important duty of setting the establishment's mood and often selected jazz from the likes of Miles Davis and Duke Ellington.

 

At this moment, at this bar, an entourage of women - dressed in the latest fashions of Paris, Milan, and New York - discussed the intrigues and tête-à-têtes of the night before. It is likely - should you have a reservation for tonight - that before the evening is over you will see the industrious young men of society stroll up to this bar and, with the theatricality of Welles, announce the earnings and portfolios of their newest accounts (no doubt in an attempt to strike up a correspondence that rivaled that of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy). The women, mind you, pay them no attention.

 

In the back corner of the dining room, an archway gave way to a labyrinth of smaller rooms reserved for the more private and affluent patrons. The tallest of these patrons would have to dip their head to get through the archway, as it had been there since the building was first established when people were smaller and could fit through tighter spaces. The journey to these rooms bore charming people in charming conversation and one might walk away from that journey overhearing the true meaning of life. 

 

The floor was polished thrice weekly, and the walls, detailed with molding and reaching twelve feet in the air, were dusted daily. From these well-cleaned walls hung elaborate tapestries and oiled paintings from artists whose names you needed to twist your tongue to pronounce. It was an opaque atmosphere and called for the intimacy of candlelight at each table.

 

In each corner was a potted bouquet of Belmore palms, their feather-like leaves hanging limply over themselves, tickling the ceiling and fanning passerby on the way to their table, or perhaps the salle de bain.

 

If you were to ever enter this very fine establishment, you would be greeted by François, the diner’s current maître d', who would kindly direct you to your evening reservation and walk you past those palms. François has been with this diner almost as long as the timely conductor has been with his tram. Starting as a busboy and cleaning the tables six nights a week, he eventually fell under the tutelage of the diner’s former maître d', who has since retired and lives in a cabin by the sea. François directs the cavalry of his waiting staff with a steady hand and not once has a complaint ever been raised about him.

 

For the sake of our story and every story told about this diner hereafter, it shall remain anonymous; an unnamed diner in an unnamed city, an oasis of indulgence, of language, and love, and life. An enigma one should count themselves lucky to come across on their own accord.

 

Sitting in the booth three rows from the door, two men sat inconspicuously on either side of the table, their eyes flirting over their leather-bound menus, humming indecisions beneath their breath. 

 

“Same as always?,” the one with his back to the door asked the other without raising his eyes.

 

“Hugo calls it ‘my usual’ for a reason,” the other chuckled, closing the menu and resting it on the table, clearing his throat as the waiter approached. Alas! he had only opened the menu to observe the formality of opening a menu.

 

“Monsieur Wright, Monsieur Albers, welcome back to **********, have we decided on our course of action tonight,” the waiter began as he delivered a single loaf of bread to the table. The loaf was cut in three different directions,  gracefully balancing the proportion of crust and bread.

​

“Thank you, Hugo,” Frank Lloyd Wright said, “The usual." (The usual, of course, is red snapper with caviar and a neat Bushmill Irish whiskey).

 

“And I think I might try the octopus with black bean-pear sauce today,” Josef Albers followed, “and let’s pair that with an oaked merlot, sommelier’s recommendation.”

 

“Excellent decisions as always Monsieurs, I will inform the kitchen,” Hugo the waiter said, bowing his head before stepping away from the table, nimbly avoiding another waiter headed toward the back archway carrying three ice buckets of corked bottles. If you had stopped this other waiter on his expedition to the archway and inquired after the contents of his bucket, he would inform you - with the casual urgency typical of a man with many things to do - that he was carrying two bottles of champagne and one bottle of a 1932 Château Latour for a decidedly eccentric fellow celebrating his 92nd birthday.

 

Albers glanced over the top of his glasses at Wright once Hugo had receded to the kitchen and the other waiter had disappeared under the archway, “All these years later and I still don’t understand why you won't pair your drink with your food. Ahh! But what does it matter, it's my turn to prompt our discussion and I thought of a great one last night. What would you do to this place… you know, right now, if you could redesign it.”

 

“Josef, my friend, a man is a fool if he drinks before he reaches the age of fifty, and a fool if he doesn’t afterward. At fifty I started with Irish whiskey and I will continue to do so until I reach a hundred and fifty.”

 

“You and your poetry,” scoffed Albers reaching for a piece of bread, “what about the redesign.”

 

Wright shifted in his seat thoughtfully, studying the diner amid the bustling clamor of its contained ecosystem. As he did so, Hugo returned with the Irish whiskey and several cocktail napkins. The architect paused for a moment and motioned to the waiter.

 

“Hugo, could you please bring a pile of these out,” he asked, tapping the napkins.

 

“Certainly Monsieur Wright,” was the reply.

 

Hugo returned and presented the table with a pile of napkins so thick Wright could be forgiven for thinking he had just been handed Dorian Gray. Slowly, the architect reached over his glass of whiskey and grabbed a few from the pile. Then, reaching inside his breast pocket, produced a silver fountain pen. 

 

For several minutes, Albers watched Wright work, but soon found himself drawn to the details around him.

 

Once, while waiting for Wright to finish, Albers watched Hugo entrust a divine platter of prawns to the couple in the booth behind Wright; “Fresh caught from Palamós,” he overheard the waiter say. Albers preferred the ones from Huelva. Twice, he saw the fountain pen tear a napkin in two. No sooner had the pen finished its interpretation of Moses that a huffing and hunched over Wright grabbed a some more before continuing in silence. Three times, Albers found himself staring into the dancing flame of their table’s candle, waiting for the wax to pool and harden at the bottom of the bobèche. 

 

And at one point (just after the platter of prawns was delivered and just before the second napkin incident) he saw Wright’s whiskey ripple, indicating the arrival of the tram. Turning, Albers watched silhouettes of strangers disembark, tilting their heads and turning their collars up against the rain while the ones boarding shook loose their umbrellas and unzipped their coats. One man stayed seated in the tram with his legs crossed and nose shoved into a newspaper. “Maybe the weekly funnies,” Albers thought. The harsh light of the cabins’ interior bit into the soft glow of the ornate street-lamps, then the tram whistled, closed its doors, and pulled away. His watch read 9:51pm, 22 minutes after the last whistle. Albers smiled to himself as if witnessing this scheduled dance of human phenomena for the first time. Before turning back to Wright, he noticed the doorman crush the butt of his cigarette beneath his heel and extract another one from his pocket. 

 

By the time the architect finished almost a half hour later, Hugo had returned with their entrées and Albers was watching a delegation of industrious young men approach the bar. Hugo, for his part, peered inquisitively over Wright’s shoulder at the pile of napkins spread across the table, but a wise waiter never inquires, and so the man kept his questions to himself.

 

Wright sat up and sighed before noticing the waiter, “Ah! Splendid, right here is good.”

 

After Hugo had left once more, Wright leaned back and furrowed his eyebrows together, dissecting every inch of the diner again as if confirming he had made note of everything. Albers waited patiently while his friend tapped the pen against his chin.

 

A few seconds passed until Wright set the pen down and leaned forward, pushing a few of the napkins across the table with two fingers.

 

“Well,” Wright started, “what do you think?”

 

With the bottom of his spoon, Albers tested the black bean-pear sauce (sublime! as usual!) and shuffled through the napkins, on them were drawings detailing every aspect of the diner and its intricacies. The architect had anticipated everything, where there were once sharp corners, Wright envisioned smooth arcs. Gold accents had been converted to copper, windows emphasized outside lighting rather than competed with it, and prairie wall lamps were precisely placed along the walls to fill the gaps neglected by his clerestory windows. Where the diner once had an umber-stained floor, Wright wanted walnut; the walls, once dark, were now olive green. Even the ceiling was walnut and maple, latticed into concentric squares, much to the pleasure of our wonderful Albers whose own artistic campaign, Homage To The Square, explored the psychological reaction and relationships colors alone - through the form of squares within squares - can produce. 

 

Albers kept flipping through the napkins, one depicted the booths as horizontally-ribbed sienna suede; another theorized how light would interact with the colors, with the patrons, and with the space itself. And the details! There were plans for cornices and friezes, spindles and sconces, pedestals and pilasters! It was at this moment Albers’ realized he had only looked at half of the napkins now in his possession.

 

This was no longer the place the two friends had frequented for fourteen years, Wright had sketched an atmospheric sanctuary of spatial beauty, grandiose but intimate, collective but individual.

 

The architect spooned some caviar onto his snapper and pulled a final, withheld napkin from beneath the table, “and there's this.”

 

Albers grabbed the napkin and froze. On it was a plan for a large painting against the main wall in the dining room. The painting was to be of Albers’ design, with the mathematical proportions of its squares suggestively intended to match the mathematical proportions of the latticed ceiling described earlier.

 

It is here we must retreat a few decades prior, just when François was coming under the tutelage of the former maître d' and Hugo was but a boy skipping rocks in the riverbed. It was around this time Wright and Albers, the architect and the painter, had formed a rivalry whose rhetorical battles challenged that of Danglars and Dantés’. 

 

Wright, a proprietor of a more eccentric style, believed that “more is more and less is bore.” His oeuvre often had recurring motifs of eclectic intricacies; playing with the pomp and decoration of stained glasses and overhanging eaves, spindles and friezes and pilasters. An art collector, philosopher, and writer, the architect sought to design his work in harmony with nature, bringing the outside in and the inside out. Wright also looked within, deciding where his clients should eat, where they should sleep, what chairs they should sit in and what art they should look at. He was a controversial visionary, emerging as his own white knight to conquer the sterile monotony of the International Style. 

 

Josef Albers was born from this International Style - an ideology that approached design with rectilinear forms, open spaces, and a lack of ornamentation. He played with the absence of the ornate, utilizing sharp edges, right angles and facades of functionalism to produce his work. But the painter was also a cerebral purveyor of the world who had more than a mild curiosity about the visual affairs of life and often assumed the direct approach and mantra of “opening one's eyes.” He liked to look at the way sunlight hit a cup of tea, to study the character of a paper’s torn edge, and to sensitize himself to how the adjacency of colors influences the colors themselves. He taught at Yale and Bauhaus, inspiring others to cultivate their own visions, imaginations, and interpretations of the world.

 

The two shared a cross-medium rivalry for several years, frequenting the press rooms of foreign newspapers to critique the latest feat of the other. But on a sunlit September day twenty years ago, they accidentally met along the French Riviera and conversed about sailboats and the novelty of vanilla ice cream from a particular place off the Rue De La République. Newspaper assistants during that time will remember being charged by their editors with the confusing task of discovering why their leading art critics weren’t coming in anymore, for the architect and the painter had never visited the press rooms again.

 

Fourteen years ago, the architect and the painter happened upon each other once again at the bar of an unnamed diner in an unnamed city listening to Duke Ellington. It was a place one might call an oasis of language and love and life that served only the finest food in the world. The rest is history.

 

Our readers will remember the moment when we last left our two artists and Albers had frozen over the thought of having a piece of his work as part of Wright’s design. The clash of style was unlike the incessant puppet strings routinely attached to Wright’s work, for the painter was aware of the architect's nature to dictate the angle of a chair, the color of a pillow, and even the length of a bedsheet's fold. Albers smiled to himself, Wright’s decision to include him in his hypothesized plan would send those newspaper editors of long ago into a frenzy.

 

“But my dear fellow, this is my favorite piece I’ve never done!,” exclaimed Albers.

 

“Perhaps I’m getting soft in my old age,” Wright said, “but you yourself must have your own vision of this place, since you posed the question.”

 

Albers looked again at the napkins now in his possession, he had certainly meditated about redesigning the diner before, and again today while staring into the candle’s bickering flame. He had imagined the diner divided into the sections of a chessboard, each square a different color, varying from table to table, from booth to booth. He thought about how colors could influence a dining experience, how they would influence language and conversation and the food itself. He wondered how French would sound in Falu Red, or Serbian in a shade of Sacramento Green, how English would roll off the tongue at a table in Honey-tipped Yellow, or if Korean could find its composure in a Crimson. He wondered what octopus would taste like in Ocher, bouillabaisse surrounded by a Baltic Blue, and if a plum might still taste sweet in a Pewter Gray. In the whole of this hypothetical adventure, he foresaw François’ cavalry as connoisseurs of both food and color, liquor and life.

 

The painter had painted pictures in his mind of new light fixtures that radiated with the same hues of the sections they found themselves in. They would coil and uncoil themselves like geometric snakes, illuminating and submerging each section in different colors. And where the sections intersected the colors would blend, it would be a prism of aesthetic experience, changing based on where you sat and when you sat and who you sat with. Meals would rise and fall, dialogues would ebb and flow based on the rhythms and tensions, the pushes and pulls of color. The diner was to be an inexhaustive personification of the very pedagogy imbedded into his titular series.

 

The painter shared all of these thoughts and ideas with his friend the architect.

 

For the rest of the dinner the two friends debated which diner design was better and discussed the proper strategy needed in a game of Kaschlan (or, more precisely for that matter, whether one should attack like Napoleon at Naples or defend like the British at the Bulge). After not settling on an answer for both queries, they resolved to have the final verdict procured by an assembly of Hugo and François. When the plates were finally cleared and the last of the merlot swallowed, Hugo reappeared at the table.

 

“Pardon, Monsieurs, shall you stay for dessert tonight,” the waiter inquired, glacially gesturing to the menu underneath his arm like a conductor cueing his flutes.

 

While Wright and Hugo engaged in a discourse about the menu - a piece of paper with the anatomy of fine wines and well confected desserts - Albers fell into thought, and as he thought, he looked around the very fine establishment he often found himself in these last fourteen years. He mused over the diner, the aromas of the kitchen’s delicacies, the bustling servers and the perpetual kicking of the kitchen doors. He listened to the rise and fall of conversation and the sommelier's jazz, pondering the possibilities held within each of them. And he thought about the people of this place, all its denizens and dwellers, its suitors and suitresses. He thought about Hugo and François, and he returned the wave of an eccentric looking fellow in a birthday hat emerging from the archway. 

 

Turning just in time to see the maître d' greet the newest reservation of the night, he thought about what to get for dessert. But before deciding, Albers glanced back to watch the doorman turn his collar up against the wind, still pulling on his damp cigarette, and he felt the rough, worn leather of the booth beneath him, contemplating what it would feel like in sienna-colored suede. 

 

Yes, the painter thought, maybe Wright's design was better, or maybe his; but perhaps the diner didn’t need to change, maybe it was right just the way it was, the way it had always been and the way it always will be. 

 

He smiled and made his decision.

 

“Hugo, I am in a delectable mood today, I think I'll have two scoops of vanilla ice cream… for old times sake.”

 

“And Hugo, my friend,” Wright called as the waiter began to step away, “tell François to come here, we need you two to resolve a few debates we’ve had tonight.”

 

The waiter, whose position often required an adherence to the judicious formalities of fine dining, let himself smile as he turned toward the kitchen… 

… But we must not leave this story yet, because a few seconds later, in that odd effect of comedic timing that takes hold of only the most random moments, Hugo opens the door to the kitchen just as the doorman opens the door for that fellow in the birthday hat. For precisely three seconds, the allegro of the kitchen will overlap with the tenor of the restaurant which, in turn, will overlap with the adagio of the rain. The concerto will conclude - precisely three seconds later - with the soprano of a tram whistle and the percussion of two closing doors. Voilà!