In the pouring rain, I drive through Ellsworth, my stomach aching with hunger. I’d left home mid-morning on a mission to find back issues of Gourmet magazine without considering how hungry I would feel by the time I was done. (Successfully done, I should add, thanks to the Big Chicken Barn in Orland — what a treasure.)
There was a time when the idea of dining alone would bubble into panic. I wouldn’t do it. I couldn’t. But that time is long gone. These days, I love the freedom and peace that comes with a table for one.
On this rainy mid-April Saturday, I headed to Siam Sky, a Thai restaurant in Ellsworth that I have heard good things about.
Situated not far from Goodwill and Finelli Pizzeria, Siam Sky is a quiet restaurant that I’ve passed dozens of times on the trip back from hikes at Acadia, often remarking on how my kids and I should try it sometime. When I finally pull in, the sometime is a solo trip, and I am so ready.
It’s lunchtime, and Siam Sky has a page of specials covering everything from curries to familiar noodle dishes to stir-fries. I order a red curry with chicken, selecting a Thai roll and chicken satay as my included appetizers. I love a good lunch special. Then I settle in, pulling out a book (“Save Me the Plums,” by Ruth Reichl, a lovely memoir about the author’s time at the helm of Gourmet magazine) from my bag and losing myself in the words.
I can hear the sizzle of ingredients hitting a hot pan in the kitchen. I’ve arrived during a lull, and I am the only one in the dining room until a trio enters, hitting the bell for service once then again a few minutes later.
When my server emerges with a divided tray minutes later, I am surprised to see a petite salad overflowing with vibrantly colored vegetables and a dainty bowl of soup with a translucent broth and noodles along with my browned and crispy Thai roll and slightly yellow chicken satay and their associated sauces. It’s lovely and fresh, an appetizer array that makes me excited to dig in.
The Thai roll is appropriately crispy and hot, just off the pan. Likewise, the well-seasoned chicken satay is a delight dipped into a perfectly prepared peanut sauce. When the curry emerges later, it’s delicious — the creamy blend of spicy, rich and sweet that makes red curry one of my favorites. The rice has been fashioned into a heart shape, a sweet detail on a delicious dish. I eat it all and have zero regrets.
While I am there, others enter and take a table at the rear of the restaurant. They are having a vibrant conversation, but it doesn’t distract me from my good book and excellent food. I enjoy my table for one.
I was 19 the first time I ate out alone. It wasn’t a big deal, in terms of location — just the Burger King near where I worked in New York. But it was a big deal personally. Eating alone in a restaurant — even a fast food joint — wasn’t something anyone I knew did or talked about. The prospect was fearsome. And then I did it again and again, enjoying the people watching, the natural flow of conversations swirling around me and the ability to eat as fast or slow as I pleased.
When I was in my early 20s, I went to bars alone for dinner, sometimes showing up early to eat before my friends would arrive for drinks later. One night, seated at the bar, a man tried to send me a drink. It would be polite to say thank you, I thought. But I didn’t want it — and I didn’t want to send the wrong impression. I wasn’t interested. The bartender, a sweet woman, let me know I could say no. I declined.
Later in my 20s, married with children at home, I started traveling for work and relished the gift of being able to eat wherever I wished. I could take as long as I wanted, savoring each morsel of sushi at a restaurant in South Beach or eating a sandwich very slowly on a bench in Gramercy Park in New York. It was freedom, delivered in small doses.
When I was first separated in my mid-30s, though, I couldn’t do it anymore. I was in a new place and a new stage of life and barely had my footing — dining out alone was a bridge too far. But after a while, I started going to lunch alone. Sometimes I took student papers to grade. Other times I took a book. But it still didn’t come with the same feelings of freedom and joy I’d experienced in the past. It was more like a personal vendetta — a reclaiming of me.
It’s been a decade since I moved to Maine, newly separated and ready for my next chapter. In that time, I have reclaimed myself and forged ahead. And that’s what makes my love of eating out alone now so significant. I’ve fallen for it again, savoring the peacefulness and also the empoweringness of it all.
None of that is to say I don’t also love dining out with friends or with my children, who are now in their later teens. I do. I love that, too, and do it as often as I can.
But to be comfortable with yourself and to savor a meal solo is a beautiful experience.
