Dining alone in restaurants, like other solitary activities, is a matter of perception. If you feel guilty about it and think you shouldn’t be doing it, it’s dreadful. On the other hand, if you can enjoy it as one of the diverting side dishes to the great shared feast of life, it can be delicious. Dining in company isn’t always an unalloyed pleasure, anyway. If your companion is dull or irritating, or the chemistry of conversation absent, you might as well be alone. And if you are simply too tired to offer another person your full attention, a little solitary sustenance can be just the thing.

One night in New York I was hungry but exhausted beyond sociability. So I took a taxi to Grand Central station, and went to the famous Oyster Bar. It was the perfect place to eat alone. There, away from the gingham-clad tables in the main dining room, seated in rows around the curves of the counters, was a respectable scattering of lone diners like me.