After years of eating alone all over the world, environmental journalist and educator Simran Sethi celebrates the act of dining alone in her new book, Bread, Wine, Chocolate. The book couldn’t be more timely. Open Table, an online restaurant reservations provider, just reported last month a 62 percent rise in solo reservations over the past two years. And in another report by the Food Marketing Institute, data showed that almost half of all meals eaten in America are now eaten alone, reports Jill Newmark.
Today, Newmark says, a table for one can also be a “third place” where we go voluntarily to eat out alone with others— while technology helps ease some of the discomfort of eating solo in public.
