Matters of taste: dining with strangers

Paris in August. Everyone was away and everything was closed. I was alone for the whole month. For the first two days I ate my usual chicken broth soup. On the third day I made gazpacho by liquidising leftover tomato salad. Then I was bored and a bit lonely. The happy quotidian question “what shall we eat today?” had been replaced by a plaintive dilemma: who am I going to eat with?

Eating alone is a curious thing. “We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink,” said Epicurus many years ago, “for dining alone is leading the life of a lion or wolf.” At home, solo quaffing balances indulgence against expediency. I tend to pare down to the very simple: salmon sloshed with sesame oil and soy sauce. Bacon sandwich. Bags of crisps and pots of taramasalata.

Eating in restaurants alone is an awkward social navigation. It can be fun if it turns into an adventure—if you end up talking to people; if you end up, in effect, not alone. But more often I find myself holding a book in one hand and a fork in the other, an unhappy marriage of two pleasures.

Exception for the exceptional: once I lunched (for an article) at a table for one at Pierre Gagnaire, an exalted three Michelin-star restaurant in Paris. I was prepared to be miserable. But because I had no one to talk to, I found I could savour and examine every mouthful: gorgonzola ice cream, cool and smooth and salty; hake in sweet and spicy sauce; strawberry and rhubarb matched against a bitter liquorice mousse. For two hours I was blissfully engrossed in the precision engineering and art of haute cuisine.

Pierre Gagnaire was closed for the summer, like everything else. I was desperate. I went on the internet.

Jim Haynes’s name pops up at the top of any search of “supper club Paris.” He has been hosting a dinner at his apartment in a leafy part of the 14th arrondissement every Sunday night for more than 30 years. All are welcome; in mid August there were more than 80 of us. Jim is a founder of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. In the 1980s he wrote guide books to eastern Europe that were collections of people to meet when you got there. He is by nature a nexus, an introducer. Over time he has honed mass entertaining to optimal operational ease: a different cook every week; a pile of plates, a fork and a paper napkin per person; boxes of wine. Everyone pays €30. The evening I went, a chef from Texas had cooked up a vat of chili con carne with cheddar cheese, guacamole, sour cream and all the fixings.

Guests spilled out over the cobbles of the adjacent mews where a few tables and chairs had been set up. Some were born and raised Parisians, some long-time residents, and others visitors and tourists. I met a teacher from Birmingham, a children’s books writer and two German computer scientists who were researching an algorithm of randomness.

“First you must prepare the stage for randomness to happen—” one carefully explained. Jim smiled from his proprietorial perch on a stool, as if in accordance. “The first 15 minutes people have that deer-in-the-headlights look,” he told the New York Times a couple of years ago, “but 15 minutes later they’re standing with a plate of food, laughing with someone they just met, or joining a group they find interesting. The food is the glue, but people are the biggest attraction.”

The evening was fun because everyone was happy to share and join in. Emboldened, a few days later I went to a dinner held in the apartment of an Argentinian chef. I found it on a website called Eat With. There were five guests: a restaurant-owning couple from Melbourne, an aunt and her niece from Chicago, and me. We paid €52 and ate handsomely: homemade empanadas with chimichurri sauce, pea tortellini, cod with mushrooms and a fluffy cheesecake that melted like a cloud in my mouth. Not cheap, not bad. The company was friendly, but I missed the German computer geeks.

My third outreach attempt was a punt into the wacky. I joined an Anglophone group meeting in a Tibetan restaurant to hear a talk from an American psychologist. The soup was packet, the curry was tinned. The organiser was a blowsy lady from Atlanta wearing a red nylon lace top. I don’t know if she was drunk or just naturally imperious, but the fun began when she wanted Rhonda the psychologist to stand up to deliver her talk and Rhonda refused because her feet were hurting. We all watched bemused as the stand-off sit-down reached a storming crescendo. “You will respect me!” “Never have I been so insulted!” I tried not to giggle. Dinner theatre!

But at the next table I observed a couple eating dinner in total silence, each bent to the glowing rectangles of their phones. Turns out you can eat alone even if you’re with someone.