Opinion | Table for one: the pleasures of eating alone, and why it’s one of the best forms of self-care
- Dining out alone frees you from having to consider others’ tastes and calendars, and lets you savour what you are eating without companions distracting you
- You can scarf down dumplings to your heart’s content, get face-deep in a sandwich without worrying how it looks, or luxuriate in a menu of haute cuisine
Food tastes better when you’re eating it alone. I can vouch for this statement because I’m writing it while seated at a table for one at Hong Kong restaurant Cornerstone, having just happily devoured a gorgeous risotto with Caledonian blue prawns.
Without a dining companion to distract me, I was able to fully appreciate the subtle sweetness and acidity that rounded off the richly flavoured dish, and the contrast that was created by pieces of pork crackling that punctuated the rice.
I hadn’t planned on getting dessert, but I enjoyed the risotto and the starter (a spiced chickpea tikka studded with slivers of smoked sardines) so much that I’ve decided to order the pâte à choux with my coffee. After all, I’m eating by myself. And that means I get to eat whatever I want.
I’ve always had a habit of dining solo. Even as a teen, when friends, understandably, weren’t eager to try fried bugs with me or didn’t want to eat mushy canned peas for a month just to save up for an omakase meal, I did the most sensible thing and went to those restaurants by myself.
If the place turned out to be a dud, I wouldn’t have to feel guilty about dragging my friends there. And if it was good, as most often was the case, I’d get the satisfaction of recommending it to pals and maybe even revisiting the restaurant with them.
Perhaps it helped that I grew up in a city like Hong Kong, where independent dining is fairly common.
