Perhaps by the end of the day Michael Wolff will tell us it was all a joke, like Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” And that he couldn’t have possibly been serious when he wrote in British GQ, “You likely wouldn’t have sex with someone who took you to the wrong restaurant (or at least wouldn’t be happy about it)” and “if someone takes me to, say, a grim little Japanese place for lunch, instead of a prestigious destination, I drop them.” But what if he means it? (And, incidentally, if Kate Upton takes me to Sbarro’s, for just this once, I’ll be fine with it.)

In his essay “Table 13 or Bust,” Wolff laments the “predicament” of New Yorkers—finding the right table at the right restaurant for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And if you don’t care about the dining scene and the importance of being recognized (but not overly doted on), then why on earth are you even here? “For an adult in the city,” he writes, “restaurants occupy about as much time in a day, and impose as many rules, and create a similar insecurity or nameless rage, as school in the life of a child. There are other similarities: going to the right restaurants is at least as important as going to the right schools…. You’re a bore and rube if you haven’t eaten where everybody has eaten—or at least if you’re not shaking with excitement about getting there soon.”