Take Yourself Out!

Eating alone is pretty great, actually

While I’m marveling at a plate of wild giant octopus, served in a light dashi broth, it briefly occurs to me that I may not have any way of getting home. The parking attendant made it very clear that he was locking the garage at 9:00 p.m., and that it didn’t make any difference to him whether or not my Subaru was inside. At the pace this meal is unfolding, I’ll be lucky to escape by 9:30. And the thought of a wallet-draining LA-to-OC Uber doesn’t exactly sweeten the broth.

No matter. I’m on a very important date with a beautiful cephalopod, and I plan to make the most of it. After all, there won’t be a second: I’m one of the last to dine at DTLA’s Shibumi before it closes for good. I’d reserved this seat weeks ago, and it was going to take more than a locked garage to keep me from sharing one final rendezvous with my tentacled companion.

This is one of the many perks of dining alone: there’s nobody to make you grapple with the outside world. At the counter in Shibumi, whatever car-related disaster awaits me is a problem for later. Right now, it’s just me and my dinner—my plate of thick-cut bigeye tuna sashimi, draped in ripe heirloom tomato and funky fermented pepper. I don’t have to make small talk with the tuna. The tuna doesn’t remind me that I left my work laptop in the backseat of the Subaru. For the moment, we’re entirely present. It feels like romance.

I might ask for a little privacy with my special tuna friend, but luckily, I’m already alone. That’s another perk of solo dining—you can fade into the wallpaper, a very hungry fly on the wall. No one’s around to arch an eyebrow when I lick the plate clean because no one’s watching me at all. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m not watching them.

You notice all kinds of things when you’re alone at a restaurant. At the end of the bar, a couple keeps begging the chef to take a shot with them, and I watch him flash pleading glances at the sous chef when they won’t let up. Beside me, a woman takes exactly one bite of each dish before setting her chopsticks down; the servers exchange bemused looks every time they ferry away another barely-touched plate. To my left, a man is explaining to his unimpressed date that he once lived in Japan for a few months and that “the food over there is craaaaazy.” I gulp, shuffle my feet, and turn back to my own plate—a beautiful filet of sea eel tempura.

The unagi is exceptional—the skin has a potato-chip-like crunch that gives way to a soft, flaky interior. It’s simple, but it’s perfectly executed. I wish I had someone to talk about this experience with.

There’s the catch. I really do love dining alone—I love being able to lose myself in the food and the ambience of a place, I love not worrying whether a companion is enjoying themselves, and I love being able to snag a last-minute reservation. But I love sharing food more. And there’s always that little flutter in my stomach when I’m the only solo diner in the restaurant.

Also, for what it’s worth, I am actually a little worried about my car.

Thank goodness for dessert.

In the nine years Shibumi was open, their koji (r)ice cream was the one dish that never left the menu. As the name implies, it’s a cold, sweet dessert made of rice, with a lighter texture than regular ice cream, served with poached apricots and a sweet castella cake.

It is transcendent. Had I hesitated on booking the reservation—waited until I found a friend willing to drop stupid money on a single meal—I would’ve missed my one chance to taste it.

I keep this in mind as I sprint back to the parking garage. I’ve never run faster, even with eight courses of Japanese food sloshing around in my stomach. If I had gone with a dining partner, they almost certainly would’ve slowed me down—and had I been two minutes later, my Subaru would’ve been lost to time.

Thank goodness I went by myself.