baking a pancake brain

In the cold months of 2020, socializing in New York required placing an overly-large dinner reservation to simulate a bar. We often placed ten-person reservations for our COVID social pod. Though we wanted to recreate the standing room of a bar, the seating arrangements cemented you to one or two conversational partners for the entirety of the meal.

As Omnicron rears and puts us back to that pre-vaccine place of wary awareness of your neighbors (both in hygiene and topical similarities), my room...