I read an interesting thing the other day. It was a small question about luxury.

"Is it still luxurious if you got it on sale?"

I found this question wonderful!

Is it? Is that cashmere sweater you purchased at the end of last season at the Gap for $78 as luxurious as the one Bob sports from Lucien Pellat-Finet for $2,000? Is the Toyota Corolla LE (Luxury Edition) a step above The BMW 310 (Not the LE) that it is parked next to in the Wall-Mart parking lot? The word "Luxury" is bandied about a lot these days. Everyone wants to think that they are ridiculously special and slightly better than the people around them. And when I say "Everyone", I mean Me.

Luxury isn't just in what you wear or what you drive, it has seeped into every section of our lives like cigarette smoke. We are unable to brush our teeth anymore without some wonderfully-silly looking toothbrush or even shave without a 7 bladed, vibrating, monstrosity clutched in our fist. Has it all gone too far? Are we becoming victims of our own misguided, attempts at pampering? I don't know. I will get back to you all with the answer in fifteen years. By then, I am certain we will come up with a new word for luxury given that all the luxurious things we have will then be commonplace.

There is a real point to all this talk of luxury. I don't go in for all the luxury items, but there is one thing: One item I will indulge in is food. I love to eat. I live to go out somewhere lovely, be treated well and sample the best offerings from the best chefs. I have a hard time believing when people tell me they eat just for sustenance. I like to think I can remember at least one dish from every place I have ever eaten. I can describe the pumpkin farotto I ate from Danny Meyer's Union Square Cafe last month. I could tell you about the Roasted Lamb and Goat Cheese Panini from Cafe Deluxe last year. If you like I can tell you the first and the last things I ate in London too. Food is important to me.

I have been making a list of places here in DC and have been ticking them off the list as I can. I have even added a few New York locales to my list as well, given that I travel there on occasion. One of the things I missed out on doing when I lived in San Jose, was having dinner at the French Laundry. I have sold hundreds of Thomas Keller's cookbooks in my tenure at Williams-Sonoma and pushed Bouchon down the throats of English foodies stuck on Gordon Ramsay. I own the film Spanglish (Keller taught Adam Sandler how to cook for that film) I even read the French Laundry at Home blog, but I have never eaten in his restaurant. I hear good things about his new place, 'Per Se'. Such good things, that I have put it on my list.

Where do I hear these good things? Once upon a time, a little bird named Phoebe worked at Per Se as a waiter. She then wrote a little book about it. I am dying to hear some of the things that she did in her tenure with Keller. I am also dying to sink my teeth into Keller's Gigot d' Agneau, but I will have to travel to the west coast for that one.

All of this is a long - not as bad as some - way of me telling you that Phoebe Damrosch is going to be in our Penn Quarter store on December 10th. She promises to regale us with stories of her exploits and mouth-watering descriptions of the food. I have worked in the food industry before, I understand that you get downright sick of the food by the end of your shift but I am not sure how she got to the end of working at Per Se without weighing 200 pounds. Of course, I would have been the waiter licking his fingers and sampling your soup when you told me it was cold. I would have been fired in the first week for hanging out in the kitchen "testing" all the food for seasoning.

"Sorry Chef, table fourteen said the pork tenderloin was too salty. I had to try it to make certain. Oh, and the four-top in the corner said their wine was 'corked'. I think they are wrong, because it goes great with the mustard sauce on the pork."

So! get out of the house on Monday night. Give up the foot-bore and come enjoy a talk at Lansburgh. Have a glass of wine before and maybe one or two after, what else have you got going on Monday night? That's right, Nothing! Be there!