How to Enjoy Being a Lone Eater

This time last month, I would look over and pity those sad lost souls staring into their plate on their tiny little table in the corner, half-removed of cutlery and placemats as the vacant waitress asked the dreaded question – will someone be joining you tonight, sir? 

A lonely existence

Feet tapping, going through year-old texts from their sister, the lone eater alternates between perusing the Sport pages for the millionth time and frantically searching for free wifi. In a vain attempt to retain dignity, he keeps his tie on and orders the expensive wine – but the clientele and staff aren’t fooled. These men think they’re creating the impression that the Japanese stock market is falling apart without them, but everyone else knows the miserable truth: they’re going through one of the worst experiences of the 21^st century.

And now I have joined them.

With job interviews across the country over the past fortnight, I have become a regular lone eater, and now I have experienced the sheer terror of the boredom, awkwardness and strong sense of inadequacy, I thought I would write a short list to help similar condemned folk who may find themselves in this horrific situation for the first time.

I. Take care with your choice of restaurant

The local Wetherspoons on a Friday night isn’t a good idea. The quiet, if slightly more expensive Italian round the corner is. If you’re thinking rural, the local village alehouse that has been in the same family for 7,000 years should also be avoided – you’ll end up accidentally sitting in Jeff’s seat, and Jeff doesn’t like it when people sit in his seat, and being sneered at by locals who are deeply mistrustful of anyone from the next village, let alone the other side of the country. It kills me to say it, but the lone eater is much better off at the ghastly - but crucially non-judgemental and peaceful - gastropub on the A road.

II. Find a place with free wifi

So you can check your facebook every 30 seconds for the next hour. One of life’s greatest mysteries is why this still never really gets boring.

III. Take something to read

The most important advice – a book is preferable, but a magazine will do. Last week I went into an Italian in Manchester having made the ultimate mistake of forgetting reading material. You can only read the menu so many times, so as soon as I realised I promptly left in search of a newsagents, returning ten minutes later clutching a copy of Private Eye. I subsequently spent a very happy hour eating overpriced pizza and being rudely ignored by Giuseppe and Luigi. You may feel it’s bad manners to spread the inner sanctum of Nuts or Zoo over your table, but who cares? You’re only going to be here once, and the kids on the next table have almost definitely seen it in the playground anyway. 

He might not be pretty, but he is very tasty

IV. Try some fancy food

Remember, you’re not a skint student borrowing off your parents hoping for a place on a graduate scheme, you’re a highly cultured businessman waiting for the next flight to Frankfurt. Those texts you’re sending aren’t to your friends trying to arrange a few pints later, they’re to the American trade envoy who just can’t manage without you. This kind of person doesn’t go for the burger and chips – he goes for the unicorn veal served with a lettuce leaf grown in the lost city of Atlantis. In London recently I tried clay-baked monkfish, which was presented to me to sniff before cooking. There were audible gasps of admiration from fellow diners as a convoy of waiters bought the contraption before me, and I had a quick glimpse of what it must have been like to be Julius Caesar. I think I saw a couple of women faint at the sight.

V. Read the menu very, very carefully

Although my monkfish turned out to be brilliant, it added £6 to my £10 set-menu bill, as did the cheese board (which surely misses the point of a set-menu?). I had failed to notice this originally, obviously being pre-occupied with solving the Greek financial crisis, and ended up forking out £26 for lunch. Whilst I would happily pay this not-exactly-enormous sum for a long dinner with lots of friends and several gins, it did seem slightly extortionate, to say the least, for a quick lunch by myself before catching the train.

Following these points can turn a miserable, awkward experience into one vaguely enjoyable and reasonable. The main feature of visiting a restaurant is socialising, which is obviously lacking here no matter how hard you try to chat to the waitresses, but you can get a surprising amount done over a meal with yourself – whether it be going through notes, reading a book, browsing the internet, gathering your thoughts or, in my case, sat here alone in Piccadilly Station’s Balcony Bar, writing a blog about how to enjoy being a lone eater.