Dinner for one

"Will you be dining alone this evening," said the well-tailored maitre d'.

I'm sipping my second glass of Healdsburg Carbernet Sauvingnon, and it's the fifth time since I sat down that I've heard the Latin host ask the same question. Each time the answer has been "yes," and we have all been seated in the same section.

The plate glass window in the dining room of the Restaurant Charolette frames a rainy street scene outside. People huddle under the neon-lit Broadway canopies of Virgil's Barbecue, Jimmy's Corner and other bars and restaurants as a thunderstorm pours down.

It strikes me that it rained the last time I was in New York.

My companions are dining with their Blackberries, checking email, responding to voice mails, tending to the never-ending minutiae that business travelers tend to in order to occupy themselves when business traveling alone.

I watch the huddled masses yearning to stay dry through restaurant picture window. I know I'm not the first to consider the irony of being alone in a city of 8 million people. It's strange and awkward to dine alone in a city. Even for an INTP like me.

I glance around at my fellow lone diners. They are now watching the picture window too. I wonder if they're thinking the same thing I am.

I wonder if they'll blog about it.

tagged: travel, New York, alone, business, blog, Carbernet Sauvingnon