There was a time when nearly every good restaurant had a matchbook. They waited beside the reservation book, stood in small bowls at the bar or arrived tucked discreetly onto the silver tray with the check. Guests slipped them into coat pockets and handbags without much thought. Weeks—or sometimes years later, they would reappear in the back of a drawer, still carrying the memory of a particular room, a late dinner or a city briefly inhabited. A matchbook was never simply a w