Room service.

I love everything about it.  The silver hats that keep the food steamy.  The tiny salt and pepper shakers.  The molded butter.  The mini condiments that I almost always slip into my purse instead of eat because it seems like such a tragedy to break open their seals and devour them right then and there without ruminating for a little while, without treasuring them and celebrating their existence in miniature.  I love room service so much that I almost don't care what the food actually tastes like.  I have had bad room service, but rarely.  My scale of what is good and what is bad is weighted heavily on the side of good for any meal carried or rolled into a hotel room, which I am almost sure to consume (no matter what the accommodations and much to my husband's distinct displeasure) while sitting on the bed.  And it is simply not possible to recreate a satisfying room service experience at home.  Like airplane food, it is an experience that, once separated from its context, becomes something else entirely (this recent post on Grub Street New York aside).

This morning I got to eat room service in a wonderful historic hotel in Washington, D.C.  Can we just appreciate together, for one poignant moment, the wonder of these Art Deco butter balls?  They are almost too pretty to smear on toast.  (I did it, but only after bowing my head in a reverent thanks to whoever first developed the wonderful rituals of my beloved room service.)