Claudia McNeilly on the joys of eating alone.
IGNORE THE LITERATURE, THE QUOTES AND STIGMA: EATING ALONE CAN BE WONDERFUL
‘Are we ready to order?” my waiter asks. He gestures to the empty seat beside me with a smile.
“Um… No, sorry,” I stutter. It could not be clearer that there is no one sitting next to me, so I’m not sure why he insists on “we” as a pronoun. “I’m not.”
It’s not the first time that I have been referred to in the plural while dining alone. But every time it happens I feel increasingly struck by a sense of loss, as if my solo status has plagued the restaurant with a contagious loneliness disease. I can almost feel the waiter itching to suggest I order takeout instead, sparing the restaurant of the indignity of my pathetic, companionless existence and freeing up precious table space at the same time.
Today an unprecedented amount of adults are choosing to stay single, but those who dare to ask for a “table for one, please” are often still made to feel like lesser customers. The rising trend of family style sharing plates has meant that a growing number of eateries feel either overly gluttonous or incomplete when experienced alone. Many restaurants reserve their best wines as by the bottle purchases, leaving singles with the house red. Others offer dinner specials exclusively for parties of two or more. And others still don’t accept online reservations for parties of one, forcing prospective single diners to call in and make a slightly humiliating special request.
In light of all this, dining alone can seem downright illogical. Never mind having no one to share your meal with, what’s the point in eating a meal alone if a restaurant doesn’t even seem to want you there? Despite solo diners often being made to feel undeserving, an increasing number of people are choosing to dine alone. An OpenTable study found that, between 2013 and 2015, reservations for one increased by 62 per cent. And for good reason: dining alone remains a near perfect way to experience a restaurant without the distractions and expectations that come from eating with other people.
It’s easy to miss the details of a dish or menu when you’re busy trying to engage the person sitting across from you. But solo diners, free to devote their undivided attention to their food and environment, experience a heightened sense of awareness. Often-overlooked minutiae like plating, presentation and interior design become hyper-saturated. While this minutiae may seem like a lacklustre trade- off for the company of others, it provides an increasingly rare opportunity to pause and focus on something other than those around you.
The person who dares to request a table for one is also likely to find that they save money on booze. Not only is expensive wine often only available for purchase by the bottle, but single diners quickly discover that the only difference between a public display of alcoholism and a “fun time” is whether you’re with other people.
And while the absence of others may limit your drink choice, it gives you complete freedom in ordering food. No one is there to say, “You’re no fun!” when you order a salad while everyone else is requesting cheeseburgers, or to declare that you “shouldn’t be eating that” when you do choose to indulge. Eating alone affords the diner the ability to order as much or as little as they would like without unsolicited judgment.
Despite these benefits, it’s hard not to feel antsy while sitting alone, your only company a waiter who periodically returns to refill the water glass you quickly drained in search of something to do with your hands. In these moments it can feel like the entire restaurant has turned to watch you, inventing stories about who stood you up and what type of insufferable person ends up at a restaurant unaccompanied.
Of course, no one is doing this, but thanks to decades of cultural stigma, the publication of books with titles like Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success and the many quotes denigrating the practice – “Sadder than the beggar is the man who eats alone in public.” — Jean Baudrillard — there remains a barrier between gastronomic pleasure and dining alone.
The new Netflix documentary Foodie, which follows food bloggers as they dine alone at some of the world’s best restaurants, is a near perfect example of this. Certainly, the prospect of eating at glamorous restaurants should be cause for celebration, but as each blogger plunks hundreds of dollars worth of rare nigiri sushi into his or her mouth, the opposite becomes apparent. Without anyone to share in the culinary experience, the blogger on display flashes the camera a muted smile, seemingly attempting to communicate enjoyment without being over the top. It becomes increasingly obvious that, while you can enjoy yourself while dining alone, it’s still taboo to enjoy yourself too much.
Even professional on- camera eaters like Anthony Bourdain, who often solicits locals to show him around a city, can be noticeably awkward when presented with the task of unaccompanied dining. While visiting Takashi, a Japanese yakiniku restaurant in Manhattan in his show The Layover, he says: “I may be sitting here alone and drunk now, but * long pause * there are people who like me.”
As the most capable of diners tend to flinch at the prospect of a table for one, it’s clear that restaurants have been designed for the pursuit of pleasure with parties of two or more. Yet if a restaurant serves food that is good enough to overshadow this insurmountable stigma, then it must be really good. Instead of treating singles like an embarrassing plague, tables for one should be seen as a universal sign that a restaurant is actually worth eating at. You can guarantee that no one has forced a single diner to show up unaccompanied, making solo diners perhaps the biggest compliment that a restaurant can get.
A deluge of new apps like Grouper and Grubwithus all seek to provide strangers with platonic dining companions. But instead of having dinner with an equally lonely stranger out of some misguided attempt at connection, the real solution lies in accepting that solo diners are an asset instead of a curse. Maybe then those who choose to dine alone can finally stop feeling the prickling sting of embarrassment that comes from being referred to as “we” and finally be ready to order.
We take breaking pop culture news and piece it back together at nationalpost. com/arts In general, I think, human beings are happiest at a table when they are very young, very much in love or very alone. — AN ALPHABET F OR GOURMETS ( 1949) BY M. F. K. FISHER SOLO DINERS ... EXPERIENCE A HEIGHTENED SENSE OF AWARENESS.