On a chilly Thursday night, more than a dozen customers squeeze into Amici’s wood-paneled vestibule, waiting to be seated. Arriving on time for our reservation, we are surprised when we are swept past the crowd, some of whom give us the evil eye, and are led to a table on the enclosed patio, an overflow space usable most of the year with the help of heat lamps. 

The hostess soon realizes she has given us a table slated for another group and moves us to another overflow room upstairs, where we are seated beside two large, boisterous parties—so boisterous that a man from the one other small party asks the largest group to lower the volume.