The Room · 12 September 2026 · 3-minute read

Table 10

A round table for two, in the middle of everything and bothered by none of it. Why I sit there in the afternoon, why couples sit there at night, and what I learn through the window.

Rose and Casey at a round wooden table in a red velvet booth, heads bent over a black paella in its pan; the open kitchen and stacks of plates behind them, a yellow chrysanthemum in a small vase.

I like Table 10 more than any other table in the restaurant, and there are a few reasons why.

Whose table it is

It is a beautiful table, and the credit goes to Anna Vural, our partner and the interior designer of L Campo. She decorated the whole restaurant with great care, and to me Table 10 is where that care shows most: a round wooden top, a red velvet booth curved around it, a plant at your shoulder and a single flower in a small vase.

Where it sits

Table 10 is in the middle of everything. The kitchen window is right behind you. The pass, where the runners pick up the finished plates, is a step away. This is where the food is called, where the plates are checked, where the service is organised. You are part of the operation.

And yet none of it reaches you. The booth makes a bubble. In the afternoon, when it is quiet, I sit there myself, watch the room work and use it as an office. At night I lend it to two people at a time.

The love nest

I have a name of my own for Table 10. I lovingly call it the love nest. It is the table where two people sit close, share tapas and a cocktail, and are not much interested in the rest of the room. Nobody chose it for that. It just happens there, evening after evening.

Last night

Last night Rose and Casey were at Table 10, and I went over and asked them for an honest opinion. They had the Black Paella, which is rice cooked in squid ink with Pacific calamari and cod, lemon and aioli. Casey said the cod and the ink were a beautiful combination and that he had never had them together. Rose noticed something else: a runner dropped a spoon near the table and knew exactly where to go for a new one, without a word to anybody. It shows the system is working, and a guest saw it from Table 10. They let me take their photograph and put it here.

Rose and Casey, smiling at the camera with their arms around each other, the emptied paella pan and a pink gin tonic in front of them, a cook at the window behind. — Rose and Casey at Table 10.

A confession

Now I have to be honest. As a chef, Table 10 is also my research table.

Sometimes, from the kitchen, I look through the window at Table 10 and watch the plates. What was ordered, in what sequence, what came back empty and what came back half full. It tells me whether the menu is working: whether there is enough variety, whether the tapas lead into the paella the way I intend, whether a dish is ordered and then not finished.

I watch the plates, not the people. I take no notes and keep no names, and a table has never heard from me about it, except when I walk over and ask. Every chef does this, at every table, more or less. Table 10 is just the one I can see.

So if you sit at Table 10, order what you like and share what you like. You are having dinner. I am learning something.

Torsten Schulz, Chef & Founder. All entries.