A recently opened restaurant in Amsterdam addressed a long-standing stigma of dining out solo by offering only tables made for one.
At Eenmaal (which means ‘one time’ in English), diners flying solo ate in comfortable silence, far from the pity-filled gaze of fellow diners and servers. There was no clearing of excess tableware, or the need to mutter ‘table for one,’ with a sheepish grin.
Instead, the pop-up restaurant was built and designed to break the taboo of eating out alone – particularly in fine dining restaurants.
While it’s not uncommon to eat alone at fast-food or casual eateries, Eenmaal proposed a four-course dinner for guests over two days at the end of June, where diners contemplated their plates, such as white asparagus with chamomile butter, in voluntary solitude.
Meanwhile, dining solo is a reality for business travellers who traipse the world, solo leisure travellers and lone wolves with gourmand palates.
But the advent of free wi-fi has turned smartphones and tablets into dinner companions and is giving more diners the courage to dine alone.
