As a chef, Francis Mallmann does the unthinkable—he leaves dirty tables untouched, uncleaned, overnight. But there is method to his madness.
“When I invite people home for dinner, I never clean the scene. I leave everything as it was when everybody left,” he says. “In the morning, I wake up very early, and I sit and look at everything and try to read what happened the night before. There’s a gesture in every glass, a story in the napkins and dirty dishes. Then, slowly, I will start to tidy up.”
He pauses, then adds, “There’s an
