People can make or break a meal

The last time I ate at this restaurant, I had to book a reservation three weeks in advance. This time, the reservation was made by a friend of mine. I guess it’s good to have a name that’s somewhat recognized. Being a bartender in a specific restaurant can have its perks, especially if you’ve bartended in that environment for decades.

We were seated immediately when we got there.

“Great to see you!” said the hostess genuinely.

“You still at (insert restaurant name)?”

Small talk and chitchat followed. Then the manager himself took us to our table, chatting the whole way.

I have always preferred non-needy friendships, the kind where you can pick up right where you were the last time that you were together. None of that “You didn’t text me back” nonsense, especially since people who complain about things like that are often the very people who don’t do that. It’s as if they are saying my time is more important than your time.

The waiter said hello, as did the table next to us, as well as some random guy from across the room — again, knowing people certainly helps.

But sometimes it’s awkward for the other people. It’s funny how people will vigorously shake the hand of the person who they know but completely ignore the other people at the table.

When this happens, I always take the time to introduce the people with me to the person I know. And sometimes it can get awkward when I don’t remember that person’s name.

That’s why I always introduce myself when I suspect the other person might not remember exactly where they recognize me from. It’s just the right thing to do. Being recognized is nice, but being recognized by name goes so much farther. And the opposite can be said for standing there awkwardly.

In T.S. Eliot’s famous play “The Cocktail Party,” the author plays around with that construct. The main character tries to hide the fact that he’s at a cocktail party without his estranged wife by insisting that she’s actually visiting her aunt.

My favorite line from the play is “Everyone’s alone — or so it seems to me. They make noises, and think they are talking to each other. They make faces, and think they understand each other.”

Those words are uttered by a woman whom the main character had an affair with. In the story, Eliot veers off into some pretty esoteric stuff. But the story begins and ends with a cocktail party.

“We’re waiving the corkage,” said another visitor to our table.

In the restaurant business these days, the cost of bringing in your own bottle can now be nearly $45 per bottle. It’s not simply the charge for pulling the cork, as I once had to explain to someone who wanted to know if we would waive the fee if he opened his own wine. A similar charge is often applied to cakes brought in. And that confusion is compounded by the fact that “cakeage” is often called a “cake-cutting” fee, which I had to explain more than once to someone who had brought in a pie instead of a cake. Needless to say, we didn’t waive the fee in either of those cases.

Our meal went on in a similar vein, and there was good conversation, good wine and good food — really the trifecta of a great experience. Virginia Woolf once opined that “one cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well” in her 1929 book “A Room of One’s Own” — a rather shocking sentiment for a female author at the time. (Woolf was also a friend and contemporary of Eliot.) But she was absolutely right.

Too much emphasis these days is placed on the wine, or the drinks, or the food, and not enough revolves around the people involved. My favorite wine experience was on a camping trip in the Sierras; my favorite cocktail experience was on a side street in Venice; and often my favorite food experience has been a hot dog at a ball game. It might be different for you.

When we left, the hostess extended her hand to me.

“And what was your name?” she asked.

Because the well-known bartender at that table, in that restaurant, in that town, and in that county wasn’t me.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• My most recent favorite experience was that lunch. Not because of the wine or because of the food, but rather because of the people. Because without people you are really just all by yourself.

• “What is hell? Hell is oneself. Hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from. And nothing to escape to,” also from Eliot’s “The Cocktail Party.”

• Fun fact: Spellcheck forced me to change some of the punctuation in the Eliot quotes.

• Napa, Sonoma and even Sausalito, all usual hotbeds of tourist activity, are all strangely quiet right now, meaning that if you’re a local, it’s a great time to go there.

• If you aren’t having a good time at that restaurant or at that bar, often you have to look no further than yourself for the reason.