Sofia Almeida
I have eaten alone in 49 countries so far and it is a skill that I have taken to traveling alone but it was one that I struggled with initially. The first 18 months or so of traveling alone I was embarrassed to eat dinner alone in restaurants and so I would skip it altogether, order a sandwich and eat it in my room. I would walk past restaurants that I wanted to eat in because I would have to ask for a table for one and that would be too awkward. And then somewhere in Portugal in 2017 a woman at a table next to me said to me ‘eating alone is a skill and you’re not using it’ and she was right.
The other crucial lesson that I learned for eating alone is choosing a seat. Pick a seat where it is obvious that you are staying for a while. In a restaurant practice, people who sit at the bar are considered to be locals who are there to eat. Thus, if you sit at the bar, you are announcing to the waiter that you are there to stay for a while. I choose a table where I can sit with my back to the wall. From this seat, I can read my book while I am waiting for my food to arrive. People who sit with their back to the wall are also perceived as people who are staying for a while. This seat also allows me to see what other people are ordering. If I see something that looks good, I can order it for my next meal. When people sit with their back to the wall, they are also less likely to be rushed out of the restaurant when the next table is ready to be seated.
So many of my guests come to dinner alone and sit down with their phones in their hands. That’s fine for them I suppose, but for me it signals that they’re on their own and that I should probably approach them quickly to take their order. It makes me feel that I should be treating them differently to other couples and that I want to get them in and out as quickly as possible. This makes me reluctant to approach them at all, and so I find myself giving them more space than I would give to other tables. In fact, I find myself avoiding them altogether.
It’s a completely different story when I bring a book to dinner. The book signals to my guests and to the staff that I’m a settled person, and that I’m going to be there for a while. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that I might be reading the book to avoid conversation, and so I find that I get approached less by waiters and by other guests, and that the conversations that do happen are more grounded. In fact, I’ve had four really useful conversations with other travelers and with locals while reading books about the places I’m visiting. And not one of those conversations started because someone pulled out a phone.
Timing is more important than the menu. While in Italy do not order cappuccino after lunch, in Portugal dinner may not before 8 pm, and in Mexico do not underestimate the importance of comida (the main meal of the day), which is not the dinner. Just asking the waiter for the best dishes in town (in their own language, and just three words is enough) will get you the food you did not even think about, and, most importantly, make you feel less invisible at the table.
Certain cuisines are really more geared towards solo diners than others. As a rule, those that serve dishes that are solo-friendly from the get go. So, for example, Japanese Ramen counters, Japan’s Izakaya bars with their sitting at the bar, Korean banchan-style restaurants, as well as many Indian thalis restaurants will all treat you like gold. And then of course there is the cuisine of Iberia (both Spain and Portugal) that is made for the solo diner and consists of endless, bite-sized morsels of tapas-style food that you just graze throughout the evening and can eat as and when you like. Other cuisines that are okay for solo travelers are those with small, shareable dishes of food, such as some Chinese regional cooking, Ethiopian food with its giant flatbread called an injera, or Brazilian rodízio (which is buffet-style and really better shared).
As to the rule of the conversations I have at dinner tables: I do not cross tables to talk to other diners. This means that I do not start a conversation with someone who is sitting at another table. I do however, however, respond to someone who has started a conversation with me, even if I am alone in a restaurant. I am also always clear that I am alone in a place and am happy to chat with others who are also traveling solo. I find that these are the most valuable conversations that I have had in restaurants.
As I said before, eating in your room saves a lot of money. It can save you a lot of money over the course of 30 days. However, by not going out to eat for dinner you are missing out on learning the local dishes of the places you visit. And while staying in a hostel is a great way to see a city, you do miss out on the city affecting you while you are there. If you are traveling alone, you must learn to dine alone. It only takes 10 dinners to get used to it.
How often can you use translation apps in a restaurant and how impolite is it to take them out during conversation? For me it is okay to check a few words, but it is generally not acceptable to have a full conversation while a waiter is trying to tell you something. When sitting at a table for one at a restaurant it is not generally worth getting offended when you are put in the worst possible seat in the house. It is the open seat and that is what you are getting. The quality of food generally is not affected by the table position. A seat next to the kitchen can be loud but it is also generally the first table to be served as you are right next to where the waiters are collecting food. Similarly a table stuck behind a large pillar can look hideous but the waiters can still come and go from it and will generally clear and serve you just as quickly as from anywhere else.
All the things on that list were hard for me at first and grew as I continued to be willing to be a scared-twit and just do them. (Most recently, I took a ferry across the lake to my own island. And I walked to the small island right next to us that is connected by a walking bridge. I did that ferry ride by myself as well as all the hostel common rooms. All the long bus rides into cities that I knew would be crowded and busy. And I have started to add back in asking for help and asking strangers for information and all of that as well.)
