Come at me, giardia
Antibiotics have given me travel superpowers, plus an essay about dining alone.
Hey friends, Skylar here -
I’ve been down in Jalisco, Mexico for the last two weeks, drinking copious amounts of agave distillates and stuffing my face with tacos - lengua, cabeza, suadero, pastor - you name it. The one benefit of finding an engorged tick on me and having to take antibiotics is that I feel virtually invincible to any food-borne illness you might get on the road. I think that’s how it works, right? While blessed with these superpowers, I’ve been going out of my way to find particularly dubious-looking vendors with poor hygienic practices. Come at me, giardia.
It’s also been my first solo trip in three years! As such, all my meals, both fine dining and street tacos, have also been solo. The thought might give anxiety to some, but in truth, eating by myself is actually a guilty pleasure of mine. So I’ve been thinking about this piece I wrote a few months ago about the joys and benefits of dining alone these days.
Coming soon is a big essay about agave distillates and some more pretty pictures.
Cheers,
Skylar
The defiant decadence of dining alone
It felt a little naughty. I was flanked by two couples on either side of me. Both were clearly on some date night out, loving love or whatever. And in the middle, there I was cocktail in hand, waiting for the first of my five courses to arrive.
I recently found myself with a weekend alone for the first time in over a year. Historically, this is not a new or foreign feeling for me - I’ve lived alone, taken many solo trips, and have always relished my alone time. But after living with someone and traveling with them full-time for 58 weeks, designated quiet time is few and far between.
Admittedly, I was a little out of practice - What now? What next? What do I do with myself?
It didn’t take long, though. After a few minutes, my introverted self started to revel in my solitude, the night but an empty canvas for me and me alone to color in the evening.
The inertia was heading towards a quiet night in, cooking dinner at home, and drinking the beer already in the fridge. That would have been a perfectly reasonable, money-conscious, and totally enjoyable night.
But no, I decided to be unreasonable. I decided to take myself to dinner.
There were two primary motives. The first was simple - why the fuck not?
The second was attention. There’s a good chance that, if I stayed home, I would have had the intention of doing some very, very necessary photo editing/writing but would’ve actually watched one too many YouTube videos instead and proceeded to resent myself the next morning.
Maybe I’m not alone.
About half, HALF, of all our waking hours are spent being entertained. That’s a staggering statistic. Assuming 8 hours of sleep, the average person gets 16 waking hours. If half of those are consuming entertainment, you barely get eight hours for an average work/study day. With every non-waking or working hour, we’re glued to some sort of screen, being entertained.
I’m impressed and disturbed by the true optimization and monopolization of our time.
So, going out alone also felt like a defiant reclamation of my attention. But I had to give myself some ground rules - no phone, headphones, book, nothing. I wanted to exist with my thoughts.
Taking yourself to any restaurant is fun, but going to upscale restaurants is particularly so. I chose TOMO, a relatively new restaurant in Seattle started by Brady Ishiwata Williams, a chef from Canlis lineage (a Seattle fine-dining institution). It’s set in a former adult video store, the interior converted into a modern, contemporary dining room - picture any interior of an upscale restaurant in 2023, and you get the idea.
The joy of dining alone starts right when you walk into the restaurant.
The host will ask if you have a reservation, and you’ll say no and ask if they have a table for one. They’ll briefly pause and look at you quizzically before showing you to the seat at the bar. Even at the most exclusive restaurants, they can always offer at least one rogue seat at the bar.
People will be immediately confused and intrigued by your presence. You’ll get stares from the date night couples sitting next to you, wondering whether you’re just strange or sad. But they don’t know you. They don’t know you’re basking in newfound solitude. They don’t know you’re a (mostly) normal person who chose to go here alone.
Depending on the atmosphere and the location, you might get some people intrigued enough to strike up a conversation - general questions about why you’re there, where you’re from, what’s the occasion - that sort of thing (it’s an easy trick to meet some folks when you’re on the road).
But not at TOMO, save for the bartender. The Seattle Freeze was in full force that night. Not to worry, though — it wasn’t about them. This night was about me enjoying my squash, Dungeness crab croquet, halibut collar, and martini-adjacent cocktail while my mind wandered into whatever direction it took itself.
The food and drink were excellent, if a little expensive. But that’s what made it a completely decadent, self-indulgent night.
Throughout the meal, the temptation was strong. Every few seconds, a phantom buzz in my pants pocket, urging me to take a look. What’s wrong with a few harmless swipes?
An experiment - the next time you’re out to eat with a friend, family, or significant other, and they go to the bathroom, how long does it take you to pull out your phone? Near instantaneous, at least based on my own experience.
Constant stimulus. We crave it. We need it. And yet, we’re lonelier than ever.
But every time I resisted the siren song of looking at my phone, it felt like a win. One small, incremental victory in reclaiming my attention from the greedy companies that want my eyeballs. No Slack messages, emails, text messages, or content to distract me from myself.
And that’s ultimately what it’s actually about. How to be okay with yourself. How to sit with your thoughts. How to sort the bad ones from the good ones. After enough time, it all seemed to melt away, and I settled into a peaceful flow state of people-watching, dropping some eaves, and observing.
Okay, I’ll admit, I did take a picture of my martini. But other than that, the phone was down!
This is so great. I have a friend who dines alone often and is amazing at chatting up strangers when he goes out. We took a trip together once and he made friends everywhere. I always resolve to be more like him but then I chicken out!
I've made a ritual of dining alone for a couple of years now. It's such a phenomenal luxury to be able to eat whatever you want instead of the kabuki of compromise you often end up doing when you're out with a friend or a date (I'll get this if you get that, can we split a salad, who's going to eat the last shrimp in the shrimp cocktail etc etc). But I do bring a book so that if I end up wanting some entertainment it's at least analog. what are the blobs of stuff on the surface of that martini?