For many people dining out simply has to be a social experience and so to sit alone at a restaurant table would just be unbearably awkward.
To dine without company, looking as if you have either been blown out by your date or weren’t able to get one in the first place, is perhaps not the best way to stimulate one’s appetite.
But a Dutch restaurant is attempting to challenge the assumption of that good food must be enjoyed with friends by only setting tables for one.
Eenmaal is a pop-up restaurant that opened in Amsterdam on June 27, serving high-class food but only to solitary diners.
The idea is to try and break the stigma that has become attached to dining alone and prove that a great meal is best appreciated without conversation.
Eenmaal’s creative director Pjotr de Jong explains: ‘We wanted to achieve two things with the branding.
‘First, we wanted to entice people to come to the restaurant and at the same time, to give them food for thought.
‘Eenmaal is a brand that is at the heart of today’s society – we wanted to demonstrate that eating in solitude can be a good thing.’
Eenmaal in Dutch is a play on words that can mean both ‘one time’ and ‘one meal’.
The restaurant closed its doors on June 29 having been met with a decisively mixed response.
While some people loved the concept of being able to appreciate food without having to endure banal chatter others were horrified at the very notion.
The woman behind the idea, Marina van Goor said: ‘Eenmaal is just like any other excellent restaurant but totally unique in one thing: it only has tables to seat one person.
‘Where you might usually go out to eat with company, at Eenmaal you are your own company.
‘It is the perfect place to dine in pleasant solitude; an exciting experiment for those who never go out for dinner alone and an attractive place to eat for those who already enjoy doing so.
Culled from Dailymail.co.uk