I love enjoying a meal with people. To me, it’s a social occasion and a shared experience, and every part of my heritage loves nothing more than to sit together and eat and eat and eat.
However, it’s not always convenient to find other people to eat with. Sometimes you just have to grab a quick bite for lunch. Sometimes it’s a weekend or a holiday where everyone’s occupied.
So what do you do? You can’t just not eat out of protest. You have to grab a bite, and if you enjoy good food, it would be nice to savor it. Or better yet, slowly enjoy a meal with a newspaper or a newfangled tablet like the kids have.
In Amsterdam, a pop-up restaurant called Eenmaal (which sounds like a rejected Pokemon) has opened to serve just this purpose. It’s the first “one-person-only” restaurant, “where tiny tables and single placemats and ample personal space are enough to make anyone feel like a leper, on purpose.”
I think it’s a brilliant concept. It’s good for the restaurant too, because single diners are probably more likely to leave larger tips for waiters and waitresses because they receive more individual service.
Now if they could only bring an Eenmaal to LA…
