Why a table for one is just the beginning of fun

Alone.

Alone can get a bad rap.

It can mean less of.

Inferior.

But the opposite can be true.

Alone can bring all kinds of riches.

And dining alone can also be a blessing. 

You can eat as quickly or as slowly as you like and a meal can be a functional, fuel top up to keep you going or something to savour and linger over. 

In my 30s I backpacked alone for 15 months. And I learned lots of lesson through eating alone.

My time in Battambang in Cambodia began with rain, continued with rain and ended with rain.  Very appropriate for a town that has a bit of a gambling issue with rain in the first place, when locals bet on the precise day and time the rain will start, often losing homes and cars chasing this custom. 

Really, this is a thing.

So, with the weather, I found a café run by a handsome, young Cambodian, Vannak. He gave cooking classes and that afternoon I was his only student. 

We cooked in the café’s kitchen. At this point dispel any notion of health and safety standards.  Think rudimentary. 

One hour later, three Khmer dishes had been created and I sat in the café having a food experience that I can only call rapturous.

To this day, it's still some of the best food I've ever tasted.

And as the deluge continued outside, I had the most leisurely lunch.  

Another benefit to dining alone is in the choice of being a mouse or a magnet, either disappearing into a good book or where the very status of being alone makes it easier to meet and talk to others. 

It's a common misconception that being alone seems to create some impenetrable shield around you that prevents any kind of social interaction. 

That afternoon in the café in Cambodia, two Italian travellers I'd met the previous day crossed the street to talk to me.  Five minutes later they were sitting with cold drinks in front of them and an hour later, they too, were in the kitchen learning Khmer cooking. 

Then an Australian soldier walked into the cafe.  Through a love for the country, he was being sponsored to learn Khmer and had been in Cambodia a few months. 

We got chatting and a couple of hours passed during which time we had dinner. 

In the evening the café became the ‘living room’ for Vannak, his parents and beautiful children, his daughter all big brown eyed, curled up in her pyjamas on his wife’s lap. 

The café had turned into a home from home.

It was still raining at eight o’clock and after ten hours of a downpour, flooding looked likely.  As I started to walk back to my hostel Vannak ran after me, insisting on giving me a lift home, ”You have brought me much business today,” he said.

And all that wonderful day’s experience from eating a meal alone. 

A far cry from hiding in some dark corner, lest people consider you socially repugnant and Billy No Mates. 

Table for one? 

Table for one is just the beginning of the fun. 

Dining alone should be celebrated and pursued, rather than shunned and pitied. 

Now there’s food for thought.

What's your experience of dining alone?