I've encountered a dining trend that I understand but Christopher Caldwelldon't especially like. I found it three times, in different forms, on my recent trip to London. I hadn't thought about it again until I saw a tweet from Washington Post dining critic Tom Sietsema last weekend.

He wrote: "That 90-minute rule some restaurants have for diners? I hadn’t thought about it much until tonight, when three of us were mid-meal and asked to vacate the table. We were not lingering, btw. We were at the mercy of the kitchen."