Welcome to Café Bistro, a restaurant with a name that will be easy to remember the next time someone asks you where you went for your birthday. We serve dinner between 4 P.M. and 7:30 P.M. Here, the lighting is always turned up and the music volume is always low, to facilitate menu-studying and discussion.

If you are in need of reading glasses because you left yours in the bathroom, where you were looking at a 1999 issue of Time Canada, your waiter can provide you with a pair.

We hope that you enjoy your meal, although we understand that you probably won’t, because enjoying things is inexplicably difficult for you.

APPETIZERS Chef’s Salad

A mix of seasonal greens and vegetables, cut into pieces small enough that they fit comfortably into your mouth without forcing you to unhinge your jaw in public.

Oysters Rockefeller

This dish comes with a twenty-minute conversation with your server about what oysters Rockefeller is and who invented it, followed by probing questions about her personal life. (Each of our waitresses is sure to be chipper and totally cool with you asking if her septum piercing is “a lesbian thing.”)

ENTRÉES Whole Grilled Fish

Enjoy this branzino that has been completely deboned for you, because on your honeymoon in Greece you choked on a fish bone and you’re still too young to die.

Steak Frites

A thick, juicy cut that is just French enough for you to mutter “bonjour” and “allo” to yourself throughout the entire meal.

Pheasant with Butter Beans

Roasted with chorizo and served with fresh bread. This is not chicken. Please don’t order this and then send it back because it is not chicken.

Your Wife’s Daal and Basmati Rice

I don’t know why you even go out.

COCKTAILS Beer

Served the way it’s supposed to be: near-frozen, sure to give you severe brain freeze halfway through, as it always does, and mostly foam.

J & B Scotch

You know it’s bad but you like it, and you don’t care if there are better whiskeys available. (We won’t start recommending anything fancy.)

*Please note, your adult daughter is not permitted to order an alcoholic drink.

DESSERT Are You Sure You Need Dessert?

Turn to your family and ask if they are sure they need dessert, intermittently glancing down at their midsections. Comes with you ordering dessert for yourself and complaining that whatever it is “doesn’t have enough nuts,” even though it was not supposed to have any nuts.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

This gluten-free treat is the pastry chef’s specialty. Be sure to eat two bites before offering the rest to a toddler at a neighboring table without first consulting her mother or considering the fact that you are a sixty-five-year-old bearded man offering a piece of cake to a stranger’s child.

THE BILL

Of course we won’t hand this to any of your children. You’re still the patriarch of this family, God damn it, and just because you’re retired doesn’t mean that any of them can put you in a home. You won’t go! You won’t! (Comes with house-made saffron ice cream.) ♦