The Return: Diplomacy on 55th

In honor of Restaurant Week and the arrival of family friends from Germany, eight of us dined at the Aquavit Cafe.

Aquavit is arguably the best Swedish Restaurant on this Island, and it didn't disappoint.

Eating Swedish food with Europeans, I am reminded of my months in Stockholm. Healthy, succinct, and carefully presented dishes, particular conversations with a high degree of specificity, and the careful mixing of cultures and values. Cautious elegance. No cold this time, and we're on my former turf: East Midtown.

The lounge at Aquavit is really nice, with comfortable minimalist leather chairs, perfect lighting, and a roominess that projects a sense of calm confidence.

This restaurant plays its game well, but carefully. The hostess infers my reservation from the number of people I cite and then apologizes for mispronouncing my last name.

We are seated at a long table on the side of the cafe, opposite the door. Since we are on the early side and I sit against the wall, I watch the other couples invade the cafe in well-dressed pairs. It is an affluent and cautious bunch, one man wearing elegant leather suspenders under his silk jacket. I do notice a number of older couples.

Dinner consists of avocado soup, Hannah Arendt, sliced hangar steak, Angela Merkel and Joshcka Fisher, Carlsberg (Elephant Carlsberg, on my insistence), and peanut butter cake. The service is near exquisite: at one point, we have the cafe's entire wait staff (5 plus the Maitre D) serving us.

Also on the table throughout dinner: various types of Aquavit and the Vietnam War.

The food is less engaging than the conversation... I enjoy the Cappuccino most, perhaps because I am the only one drinking coffee, and thus not speaking.

Afterwards, we walk down to 23rd street where the Germans and my parents depart for Brooklyn.

I walk to Trader Joes to buy groceries.