Something so strangely magical about a window: it can make a city skyline look like a painting, allow sunlight to spill over a table like melted gold, or even a simple lunch seem like a moment you will remember well after the final bite. A window is not just an architectural feature when it comes to eating: it is a scene, a narrator, a mood-maker. Other restaurants know this too well, and they have made it a core part of their identity based on what they can see through their windows.
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Suppose you come to a restaurant built over a harbor. The vastness of the glass ahead of you immediately makes you look outside as you sit down. Just like actors in a drama, boats come in and go out, gulls add a sharp curve here and there to the horizon, and the sky itself appears to take on a different tinge as the sun sinks.
This union of food and sight is not limited to the shore. In the mountains, there are restaurants along curving roads that frequently have front ridges that appear infinite. The handmade pasta consumed at a table beside a window facing the Dolomites has a different sense of richness: the dishes warm the body, the scenery awakens the imagination.
What is most interesting is that windows change how we perceive flavor. Even a cup of coffee in a cafe under the soft morning sun can make the croissant more crisp, more delicate, even smelling of the sunshine itself. A candlelit supper by a window where you can only see yourself in the reflection might make a glass of red wine look more weighty and somber. Windows are not transparent screens, but also filters that define perception.
They even rob the show at times. One finds restaurants in which the customers queue up not only to have the special meals of the chef, but also to be seated at the glass. A window is seen to be the most desirable seat in the house in such places. It may front a swirling street-car avenue, and place you in the front row of the theatre of street life.
But then not every window is dramatic. Others are very small and timid, giving only a piece of the world. Consider a country trattoria, with its small window, overlooking one olive tree, or a French cafe, where you look upon nothing but a stream of people. Even these simple windows are as strong as they can be, as they remind us that beauty doesn’t necessarily need to be big; it can be found in the details, in the ordinary.
To a large extent, the windows of a restaurant are as significant as its menu. They define ambience, promote lingering, and can even affect the mood of a diner before the first plate is served. How unequal are the sensations of these experiences:
● Sitting in a glass-walled lounge above a sparkling coastline at sunset.
● Sharing soup beside an ancient stone window cut into a centuries-old fortress.
● Watching the first lights of evening bloom across a city skyline from a skyscraper perch.
Each of these settings changes not only what you see but how you taste, how you remember, and how you connect with the person across the table.
This is intuitively known to designers and chefs. Light and view are increasingly becoming part of the imagination used to create new restaurants. Floor-to-ceiling windows in city areas blur the line between the inside and the outside, and historic restorations tend to keep the idiosyncrasy of the old window about its own narrative. The aim, in both instances, is the same, namely, to form an environment in which food and environment are combined inseparably.
The next time you are out to eat, request to be seated by the window. Tempt him to order something easy, something you like. Then bring the world outside into the recipe. It may be rain falling on the glass, the sun blazing down the stem of your wineglass, or the street lights sparkling like jewels, but you will find the most memorable meals are not always on the plate. They are written in the perspective which extends beyond it – etched indefinitely through the window.