Eating out is such a pleasure—the food， the wine， the luxury of having it all brought to you by someone else—that it’s a shame to spoil the experience by sharing it with other people.
　　OK， I’m not the curmudgeon1 that might make me sound： I do like visiting restaurants with friends. But dining out alone has its own very special attractions. For a start you can concentrate on the food. There’s nothing worse than having to invent and deliver an opinion on school league tables or Sanchez’s move to Manchester United， plus listen to everyone else’s opinions on same， when all you really want to do is tuck into your lasagne， relishing each mouthful along the way.2 The extreme version of this problem is the “working lunch.” All you can concentrate on is your desperate attempt to say the right thing in order to get the gig3/avoid losing the gig/create the right impression generally. The chicken teriyaki4 that had your mouth watering as soon as you saw it on the menu？ You’ve got zero attention left for that.

出去吃飯是人生一大美事，而如果你是独自一人，那更是一种美妙的体验。不用等着轮流发言，眼睁睁地看着盘子里的肉冷掉；你甚至可以一边大快朵颐，一边悠闲地翻翻杂志，抑或观察观察周围的人。商界大亨古尔本基安说得好：参加饭局最好只有两个人，那就是你自己和一个棒棒的餐厅领班！

　　A second great thing about eating out alone is the chance to combine food with one of life’s other true pleasures： reading. You have to plan this carefully： Indian or Chinese restaurants are best—you need food you can eat with just one hand， leaving the other free to hold your reading material. For the same reason magazines are better than books， unless it’s a particularly slim paperback.5

　　But perhaps the biggest attraction of a table for one is the opportunity it gives for people-watching. Restaurants and the different reasons for visiting them—first date， business meeting， night out with friends—produce human behaviour of astonishing richness and variety. Will the nervous 20-something persuade the girl he’s with to go back to his place after the coffee？ Will the man pitching6 his business idea get any joy out of his possible investor？ Will the married couple think of anything to say to each other before their main courses arrive？

　　This “human zoo”element of eating out alone is one of the reasons I’d hate to be famous： Everyone would be watching you， so you wouldn’t be able to watch them. The snooker7 player Steve Davis says this was one of the strangest consequences of becoming well-known： He got very self-conscious about his eating in public， almost to the level of doubting whether he was “doing it right.” 　　A close relative of the solitary8 meal is the solitary drink in a pub. Over the years several female friends have told me how much they envy me this pleasure—a woman drinking on her own is going to get hassled9 all the time. Although recently I met a woman who said she didn’t let that stop her. I asked how she dealt with blokes10 trying to chat her up. “I just tell them to get lost11.”
　　Eating alone is something I tend to do at run-ofthe-mill places： It takes a certain style to ask for a table for one at a posh restaurant，12 a style I don’t possess. The exception is breakfast—that’s less of an occasion， quicker and more informal.
　　So next time you’re considering your eating out options， remember the advice of the business magnate13 Nubar Gulbenkian： “The best number for a dinner party is two—myself and a damn good head waiter.”
　　1. curmudgeon： 脾氣坏的人。
　　2. 没有什么比这更糟糕了：你必须对学校排名表或是桑切斯加入曼联这些事构思并发表意见，然后听每个人都对此发表一番言论，但此时其实你真正想做的只有狂吃意面，在整个过程中享受每一口的好滋味。league table： 比赛成绩对照表，名次表；Sanchez： 桑切斯，智利足球运动员，现效力于曼彻斯特联足球俱乐部（Manchester United）；tuck into： 津津有味地吃，狼吞虎咽地吃；lasagne：（意大利）卤汁宽面；relish： 享受，从……中得到乐趣。
　　3. gig： 工作，职业。
　　4. chicken teriyaki： 照烧鸡肉。
　　5. slim： 薄的；paperback： 简装书，平装书。
　　6. pitch： 竭力推销。
　　7. snooker： 斯诺克台球。
　　8. solitary： 单独的，独自的。
　　9. hassle： 打扰，使烦恼。
　　10. bloke： 人，家伙。
　　11. get lost： 滚开，别来烦我。
　　12. run-of-the-mill： 普通的，一般的；style： 气派，风度；posh： 豪华的，高档的。
　　13. magnate： 巨头，大亨。