Cincinnati had a single Mobil five-star restaurant for over thirty years. Its owners finally closed it when our downtown no longer attracted enough people to support it. I was not a regular but dined there on a number of occasions. There are lots of other good places to eat in the city but nothing else even comes close to what an evening there was like. Any restaurant can serve delicious food but it is a rare one indeed that can provide a truly great meal -- because, as your post notes so well, there is so much more to that experience than merely chewing and swallowing.

My wife and I have also been regulars at a few other simpler but nice restaurants over the years and this too adds a different dimension to dining out.

To lose the combination in one reastaurant would be hard indeed and even harder for others to understands unless we ever experienced something even vaguely like it for ourselves. Thanks for this.