Floundering About’s Reviews > An Alphabet for Gourmets > Status Update

"There are few things more boringly painful... than the obligatory plunging and grabbing and arguing that are taken as a matter of course at the end of a meal. If men are present they look on it as an insult to their virility to let a woman pay. If women are eating together, they simply outshriek one another, and the noisiest bears off the check in expensive but curiously rewarding triumph."