Google "dining alone" and read the comments in response to mine on Elizabeth Large's blog piece Table For One At Ruth Chris and it looks like eating out alone at a special occasion place is a fear greater than public speaking. Those who do it are just generally considered pathetic losers - probably by people afraid of their own shadows. I normally don't care what others think; still, with this being Smalltimore, I wondered how weird it might look should I run into a business associate. Everyone to whom I mentioned my plan practically "shook their heads in pity," to quote Mary Chapin Carpenter.
But I wanted what I always want for my birthday dinner and with none of the usual suspects available to accompany me, I dined alone at The Prime Rib tonight. No big deal. And in fact . . .
I got to truly focus on the food. Other than one or two hamburgers a year, I eat beef only at The Prime Rib (why bother anywhere else?), and as that's rare (pun intended), I savored and appreciated the experience maybe even more. I'm pretty sure the slab of prime rib served me tonight was the most tender I have ever eaten. OK, it was food porn. In lieu of no appetizer, I had my two favorite sides, the stuffed baked potato and the creamed spinach (in EL's blog, I asked which restaurant meals were worth the $$$ because they could not be duplicated at home, and I certainly cannot copy this because milk and meat can never meet in my kosher kitchen). I got to rip the ends off all the bread. I was served some incredible chocolate thing, on the house, with a candle. I was fussed over without a big fuss, never waiting for anything, including endless refills of their excellent coffee.
In EL's blog, I wondered about weirdness for me, the staff, and other patrons. But the place is dark, I had on a big, gaze-obscuring hat, and without my trademark tiny dark specs, I can't see anyway, so if I was being stared at, I didn't know. The staff couldn't have been more gracious, when I made the reservation and requested my favorite table (and probably everyone else's) and when I was there. I was occupied with - no surprise - one of my BlackBerrys, working on a piece for my EBDI blog. And when I couldn't stop looking at the top of the piano - it was like staring at a map of the EBDI footprint - I googled commentary on an ee cummings poem shared with me by someone who used to occupy valuable real estate in my heart. I thought about the various good and bad buttons pushed today and who pushed them, and had yet another one pushed as e-mail from a far-away friend arrived with the bread and butter. I made my annual "A Year In The Life" list, of all the things, good and bad and just thangs, that are new and important since the last birthday. Not that I need a tally, but, jeez, it's been a most meshugana twelve months.
On my twenty minute walk home, made safer courtesy of Artscape, and defraying maybe two minutes intake of that just-about-perfect meal, I renewed the vow I make every year on my birthday, really an edict from my favorite philosopher, Eleanor Roosevelt, "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face . . . do the thing you think you cannot do." Cross off confronting the social taboo of fine dining alone. Would that everything were such low-hanging fruit.
