It’s a great space. Cool and sophisticated, it was an effortlessly busy spot full of confident looking people undaunted by the presence of beauty. It emitted a really charismatic, downtown vibe. Waxed mustaches, iPhones and carefully considered lighting were all around us. The chefs working in the open kitchen at the back were illuminated as if actors on a stage, coming across more like artists than cooks, so theatrical and precise were they in the execution of their tasks.

The food was great, arriving like sculpture on plates, each one a conversation piece to photograph and post on Instagram. It was a little bit precious and eating the food almost felt secondary, as if it was the destructive, privileged indulgence of ruining somebody else’s creation (think of a bullying child knocking over a sand castle) rather than a simple act of physical restoration.

Much of this feeling arose from the comically small portions that are served at Ursa. It was as if a parody, with the experience of dining in a restaurant having virtually nothing to do with actually getting fed. Our main course, that cost $26, was artfully arranged, but it had less than three ounces of beef in it. My appetizer, one piece of tofu that was embellished by a broth poured at the table, $12, and Rachelle’s beet salad, which I think contained one beet, was in the same ballpark. You weren’t being fed, you were being fluffed, and walking out of the restaurant– now hipster laden and cocktail shaken– we had to figure out where to go to eat. Seriously. It was as if the theatrics had been done with– as well as a good chunk of money– and now it was off to get something less “arranged,” but more sustaining.

By definition the foodie culture is judgmental. It’s implied that you need a certain level of education to appreciate what’s in front of you, but unlike other art forms, the consumption of the food does nothing to elevate you. It doesn’t make you a better, more empathetic person or lift you up and out of yourself, but simply moves you into a class above others. It’s the surface taste of things, and the love and nourishment we imagine present in meals is oddly displaced, with each trip to a restaurant more like a visit to a museum than a participatory, reciprocal expression of something shared and humble. Taste, as they say, is not a moral virtue, but a privileged acquisition that has more to do with “belonging” than the content of any given individual.

As Rachelle and I move through the crowds and against the grain, a jittery man with hair that had been cut out of an imposed, institutional necessity rather than the luxury of seduction, falls in step with us. He’s in his late 30s and he’s asking me for money, telling me that he hasn’t been with a woman in five years and wants to take one out. Pleasepleaseplease, he begs. He’s almost hopping with want, his eyes pleading– the unfairness of the universe written deeply into his every gesture.

Walking toward us is a heavy, young man who looks like might work in a video store and along beside him is the most beautiful girl in the world. His body language is a little bit separate, like he knows he’s not supposed to get too close, and there’s a kindness, a sensitivity to the way that his heavy blonde hair falls and curls to his shoulders. He’s shy, you can see that, and suddenly the most beautiful girl in the world grabs him by the hand and pulls him in to her and begins to neck with him right there in the middle of the sidewalk. It’s the final scene in a movie, and time stops as we all fade like ghosts into the background and they glow, the radiant center of this moment that will never be forgotten or repeated.