Top five... places to dine alone

Treat you to a top meal
10 April 2012

If your friends have deserted you or it's just that you want a quick bite to eat on your own, then try these top restaurants.

Le Caprice, Arlington House, Arlington Street, SW1 (020-7629 2239). Mon-Sun £50


One way to get a seat without waiting months or being, God forbid, Jeffrey Archer who probably only has months to wait, is to eat alone at the bar. You will have your back to the action but glossy surfaces and a swivelling stool can provide snapshots and glimpses of the pleased-with-themselves at play. Eating alone here might also suggest that you have something more pressing and more fun to go on to. Back-to-basics dishes such as deep-fried haddock with a minted pea puree and chips, eggs Benedict, Lincolnshire sausages with bubble and squeak, salmon fishcakes with sorrel sauce, chopped steak Americaine, make ideal one-course meals, if that is what is wanted. Afterwards, saunter slowly towards the loos checking if there is anyone you know to join for coffee. The only problem, apart from not knowing anyone, is the crush of tables now that Le Caprice has shareholders.

Chowki, 2-3 Denham Street, W1 (020-7439 1330). Mon-Sun £25

The table layout at this sibling of Mela in Shaftesbury Avenue encourages communal eating, so the lone diner eating a curry with only a dog-eared paperback for company is welcomed into the fold and disappears into the general melee. The downside of eating by yourself is the limit it tends to put on the number of dishes ordered, which here requires tantalising editing. Different regions of India feature each month and their specialities are painstakingly prepared - it is not the usual 'three-pot cooking' that furnishes the long menus typical of curry houses. A white porcelain thali served in two parts accommodates first and main course plus suggested vegetables, pulses and breads. Currently dishes from the Northwest Frontier, Karnataka and Gujerat are featured. In November, it will be the turn of Maharashtra, Coorg and Uttar Pradesh.

A meal at Chowki is a learning curve as well as a delicious bargain.

Le Gavroche, 43 Upper Brook Street, W1 (020-7408 0881). Mon-Sat £100

A man eating alone, chewing thoughtfully, sipping appreciatively, could be taken for a Michelin guide inspector. This can only work to his advantage. But I dare say the troops of waiters so ably marshalled by Silvano Giraldin can sniff out an inspector at 20 paces. The restaurant is, after all, waiting for the third star - removed when Michel Roux took over from his father, Albert, in the kitchen - to be returned. Meanwhile others can enact that definition given by Nubar Gulbenkian of an ideal number for dinner; 'two - myself and a dam' good headwaiter'. The exquisite gavotte that is a busy dining room run by professionals provides a diverting floorshow for the lone diner and there is plenty of dialogue to be had with sommelier, waiters and the drivers of trolleys of ices and sorbets and digestifs. Setprice lunch is a particular pleasure. And a bargain.


Randall & Aubin, 14-16 Brewer Street, W1 (020-7287 4447). Also at 329-331 Fulham Road, SW6 (020-7823 3515). Mon-Sun £40

Since thanks to hard-tiled surfaces and pounding music, you can't hear yourself or anyone else speak, it makes sense to eat here on your own. Also a plateau de fruits de mer, once pick comes to shove, never yields a great deal, so best to keep all the effort and reward to yourself. The premises were once Soho's most esoteric and, in some respects, best butchers with delicatessen attached. The spirit lives on in the sense of product on display and there is little interference but for the spit-roasting of poultry or grilling of fish. Staff have failed the exams at charm school but a bit of aggro can pep up a solo meal. In Soho you sit on stools at breakfast bars. In Fulham there is more comfort and slower turnover. At both outlets no bookings are taken.

Sweetings, 39 Queen Victoria Street, EC2 (020-7248 3062). Mon-Fri £40

The camaraderie of the City means that those sitting at the mahoganytopped counters soon get chatting, if only to the chap serving behind. Sweetings, nearly a century old (est.1906), is what was called in Victorian times a 'fish ordinary'. Fish and shellfish are served briskly, copiously, without fuss or fancy sauces. West Mersea oysters make a fine start to a meal or you might prefer rollmops or smoked eel. New potatoes or mash are the best accompaniment to the main course plaice, haddock, halibut, turbot, Dover sole or whatever the catch has brought that day. Green vegetables and salads are somewhat token gestures. English puddings - sweets as they call them here - include baked jam roll and spotted Dick. My preferred conclusion is Welsh rarebit laced with Worcestershire sauce and a glass of port. Coffee and credit cards are relatively recent concessions but opening times remain weekdays 11.30am-3pm.

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