Illustration by Lauren Deitzer
A few weeks ago, I was dining at one of my favorite new Fort Worth restaurants, Bocca Osteria Romana, trying out some of their new dishes — an experience I write about elsewhere in this issue.
As I often do, I was dining solo. Across the room, an attractive young woman caught my eye — and then apparently, I caught hers. She gave me a big Texas smile, then another one. This went on for a few minutes. I was anxious to tell my wife: “I’m 53 and I still got it!”
Then she got up, locked eyes with me, and headed straight for my table, as if she knew me. Oh, jeez, I thought to myself as she inched closer, I’ve been flirting with someone I know. My gosh, I hope it’s not someone from church.
“Hello,” said she. “Hey,” I replied. Whew, I don’t know her.
“Are you waiting on somebody?”
I’m on my second course. You’ve been looking at me for 20 minutes. Clearly not.
“No, dining alone.”
Here it got weird: “Do you want to join us?” At that point, her man friend was looking at me, waiting to see how I’d react.
“That’s very sweet of you to ask, but I’m OK.”
For clarity’s sake, I added: “I’m sorry, but do I know you?” Maybe I was blanking on her, after all.
“No, I don’t think so. We just feel sorry for you.”
First off, I should commend her for asking me to join them. Sometimes I think this city is growing too fast and that the people moving here are messing it up, and all this development is eradicating Fort Worth’s Fort Worth vibe. But then something like that happens, and I’m reminded of why I’ve lived in the area for 53 years. People are just friendly here.
Secondly, uh, what did she just say to me?
I honestly don’t remember how I responded, I was so aghast that someone would say that. Whatever I said, it shooed her away and she and I spent the rest of the night playing eyeball dodgeball.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how those few words perfectly sum up how Fort Worth, which is supposedly growing into this great food city, still doesn’t know how to deal with solo diners. What’s commonplace in other cities is virtually taboo here.
“There’s definitely a stigma attached to eating alone,” says my friend Carlos Cueva, a frequent solo diner and restaurant manager who currently works at the new Duchess restaurant in the South Main area. “Some people think it means this person couldn’t get a date or they got stood up. Sometimes people just want to eat alone. I know I do.”
Like Carlos, I sometimes enjoy having a nice meal to myself. Nothing against my wife, my family, my friends, but I actually look forward to nights when my dining companions are a perfectly cooked steak and a nice glass of wine.
“Me, too,” says Coco Zhang, an instructor at TCU who also enjoys dining solo. “Dining with someone else, whether it’s friends or family, takes planning — and sometimes you don’t want to plan anything, where to eat, what to order, what time to be there. You just want to go eat somewhere that’s nice and order what you want to order and eat at your own pace.”
You might assume people like us don’t like people or we’re introverts. Nothing wrong with either. But when I eat alone, I don’t hide behind a book or play with my phone. I do what I always do: I look around, smile at people, chat with the server, and just enjoy the rhythm of the restaurant. Give me an open kitchen, and I’ll be transfixed for two hours.
That experience can be easily marred by someone who isn’t well-trained in dealing with myriad dining situations. It sometimes begins with square one — the host or hostess. There are two words that I absolutely dread this person will choose to greet me with: “Just one?”
“Yes, yes, yes, that is terrible,” says Zhang, who has also been greeted with those hurtful words.
When I was younger, I worked in restaurants for several years. During my time at El Chico at the old Seminary South mall, while training as a host, I asked that very question to a guest who was by herself, and immediately the playful smile she bounced in with devolved into a look of embarrassment. I totally called her out for being alone.
My manager, who witnessed the exchange, pulled me aside and gave me the best advice I ever received in a restaurant: “You are the person who sets the tone for their meal — don’t ruin someone’s meal by asking if they’re alone.”
Sometimes when I eat alone in Fort Worth, I feel like I’m continuing to be paid back for that careless comment.
Instead of “Just one?,” a more appropriate query would be, “Table for one?” Or “How many are in your party?” The latter allows me to set the tone. I can say, “Just me tonight.”
Zhang suggests something even playful: “Dining solo with us today?” Something to make me and other solo diners feel at ease, something that doesn’t put a target on our backs the second we walk in. Some people feel self-conscious about eating alone; a poorly trained greeter can exacerbate that.
Even worse than “just one?” is the absolutely unacceptable “Can I help you?” I received this greeting at two of the top hotel restaurants in the city. Hotel restaurants. You know, where there are a lot of solo travelers. Business people. Family members waiting on other family members to show up. These are restaurants whose greeters should know better. But at both places, I didn’t even get a “Hello.” No “How are you today?” No “Welcome.” Instead, “Can I help you?”
I complained to managers both times. I told the greeters, too, they should actually greet, not begin their interaction with a guest with a condescending question. In just a matter of a few seconds, a matter of a few uttered words, a greeter can uplift your experience or destroy it.
“Too many businesses don’t really understand that the core of their business is making people feel good,” one of my favorite food writers, Ruth Reichl, told the Harvard Business Review a few years ago. “Whether it’s walking into a store or a restaurant, or being on an airplane, most people go through life hoping that good things will happen to them, and they return to businesses that make those things happen.”
Service itself has never been an issue for me when dining alone, strangely enough. I’ve heard horror stories about how single diners can be ignored in favor of bigger parties — parties that have the potential to tip significantly more. Hasn’t happened to me, though. Parties of one, I can tell you from experience, are usually a breeze for servers. They’re friendly, low maintenance, and, nine times out of ten, good tippers. I often made more off a table of one than a table of four.
Probably a little blindly, I compare Fort Worth to my second favorite city, New York, where dining alone is common. Zhang, who used to live in Brooklyn, thinks New York’s cooler with solo diners because of the sheer number of people who live alone. Also, dining here, especially at a nice restaurant, she points out, is often the time when family and friends get together, whereas in New York or Chicago or another big city, eating at a nice spot in town is the norm for many.
“In New York, it’s also about efficiency and convenience,” she says. “Here, if you want to eat alone, most people just make something at home. In New York, it’s just as easy to walk to a restaurant around the corner. Dining alone is just a bigger part of the culture there.”
On an optimistic note, Carlos says he’s noticed a shift lately in how greeters and restaurants are being trained to better accommodate the needs of solo diners. As a manager, Carlos is even helping train the next wave of fine dining staffers.
“I have noticed a big shift in how restaurant staffers are being trained to deal with various scenarios,” he says. “The bigger the city gets, the more restaurants that open, the more situations greeters and other restaurant employees are going to be expected to deal with. From what I’ve seen, from what I’ve been trying to do with service, we’re heading the right direction.”
I sure hope so. Because I certainly don’t want you feeling sorry for me.
