“Still just one?” asked the hostess at two-star Michelin, Jungsik in Tribeca. While her kind, breezy tone remained the same, she was no longer asking my name. She was questioning whether I would “still” be dining alone. Her intention was to confirm my party size, but her phrasing was not in the usual style, which assumes the reservation to be correct: “Insert Name Here: Table for Two.” Instead, she posed a statement in the form of a question, one applicable only to solo diners, asked only because of pervasive negative beliefs about dining alone in American society.
While I see a table for one as a place for healing and mindfulness, I understand the negative beliefs about dining alone; after all, I once held them. I grew up watching shows and reading stories where eating alone was a literary device for conveying loneliness. I believed the narrative that solo dining...
University of California Press