Went to Maat last night, for my birthday. The deal now that it’s a private club is that they only offer “public” reservations if they have no special club events going on that evening and/or they don’t have a lot of members dining.

They didn’t, in fact, we were the only ones in the place for the evening as best I could tell. The food, better than on my original visit – clearly the chef has been refining what he’s been doing and it was superb.

On the service end, there were a couple of minor missteps, but nothing of note. The only oddity was (and I assume it was partially due to there being no other customers) that everyone in the restaurant seemed to feel the need to come visit us at the table. They’d clearly been “briefed”, from whatever computer records are in their system – each of them nearly recited the same thing – “Mr. Perlman, so nice to have you back. I haven’t seen you since March. I hope you’ll enjoy the evening and it won’t be so long until the next time.” I have no doubt that half of them hadn’t even been there the last time I was there, but such is life. Please… just let us eat!

On the other hand, I think it impressed the hell out of Henry, and at least they’re erring in the correct direction of over-serving rather than the more common under-serving here.

Our 25th Anny dinner at Maat was really fantastic. As if you had a cousin with a Mansion that hosted you for dinner. I mentioned you to Hernan (Maitre’d? who knew about Saltshaker when I mentioned your name). At the end of the evening (when the Cuban cigar had been smoked and the single Malt consumed), Mariano the Chef gave us the tour. A special thanks.