Table for One

I've built up my moxie from years of dining solo. It's a practice I suggest everyone get comfortable with—you never know when hunger will strike.

- Marlowe Granados

"Why are you unaccompanied? You have no companion today?," asked the server at one of my favourite tavernas in Athens. The taverna was perfectly unfussy, and a block away from my temporary apartment, where I was on a self-imposed retreat to finish my second novel. I joke that I used this taverna as my personal canteen (the apartment being unequipped for cooking). The staff begrudgingly became familiar with me, and the way this particular server phrased his question was amusing, hearkening back to Jane Austen: An unaccompanied woman is one without a chaperone. It didn't faze me. “I was too impatient,” I told him. “I’m hungry now.”

I've built up an enviable amount of moxie from years of going to bars and restaurants alone, and I am an unflappable solo diner. It is like a muscle, one I suggest everyone exercise, because you never know when hunger will strike.

I've spent much of my life travelling by myself, living alone in one place or another. Dining solo did not start out intentionally, but it was necessary. Depending on what city I was in, I'd often find myself between engagements and needing a bite. Even now, at home in Toronto, it's rare I muster enough enthusiasm to cook something intricate just for myself. In addition to the convenience, going out for dinner alone is like staying at a hotel: you do it to be coddled when the mundanity of being a working adult becomes too much. Sometimes all I want is a temporary pause from chores like making my own bed, and it's not like I'll ever make steak tartare at home. Sometimes I simply want someone else to fill my glass.