Bistromathics itself is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the behavior of numbers, Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute but depended on the observer's movement in space and that time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers am not absolute, but depend on the observer's movement in restaurants.
The first non absolute number is the number of people for whom the table is reserved. This will vary during the course of the first three telephone calls to the restaurant, and then bear no apparent relation to the number of people who actually turn up, or to the number of people who subsequently join them after the show/match/party/gig or to the number of people who leave when they see who else has turned up.
The second non absolute number is the given time of arrival, which is now known to be one of those most bizarre of mathematical concepts, a recipriversexcluson, a number whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself in other words, the given time of arrival is the one moment of time at which it is impossible that any member of the party will arrive. Recipriversexclusons now play a vital part in many branches of math, including statistics and accountancy and also form the basic equations used to engineer the Somebody Else's Problem field.
The third and most mysterious piece of non absoluteness of all lies in the relationship between the number of items o...