You may be a talented cook. You may also be a fine connoisseur. Do you have that other culinary gift, though? Can you worry too much that everyone is watching you eat?
I am particularly good at imagining my own masticating, slurpy face. Some might consider this less of a skill and more a crushing self-awareness. This latter view is certainly that of my mental health professional, who is inconveniently located in the Melbourne suburb of Springvale. You try being a clinically-inhibited diner in one of the nation’s foodiest postcodes. You’ll be caught between an exquisite bowl of and a conviction that no person could ever eat them more loudly or crudely than you.
Dr Noodles is confident I can be cured. Apparently, this particular problem is not one of those I formed in childhood. It has a brief history, says Doc, who refuses to invent a serious sounding name for it, such as Slurpy, Chompy Avoidant Disorder, per my very useful suggestion. It's a bad habit I picked up on the edge of adulthood. Sometimes, you find yourself eating alone.
When I left school, I left home to “travel”- a verb used by you and me to mean “significantly increase new food options for specified period”. The family home had so rarely been empty of people; so seldom was its stovetop bare of bubbling pots. Apparently, you can get all the way to a joint in Istanbul without once imagining that families don’t magically appear with every meal.
How can I stop all these people looking at me with naked pity/ disgust? ... They aren’t, so you can’t.
Let it be said: Turkey is the friendliest (possibly most ) place I’ve been. Nonetheless, this visit occurred when I was eighteen and, frankly, pretty thick. It hadn’t occurred to me then that solo dining poses some new questions.
Least among these questions may be: how can I be sure no one will take my unfinished meal away when I am in the loo? The answer here is easy. You learn the local cutlery placement language for, “I haven’t finished this yet”, or you communicate in the international language of tears. Cry until someone brings your food back.
Chief among these questions may be: how can I stop all these people looking at me with naked pity/ disgust? The answer here is more complicated. They aren’t, so you can’t.
Nobody is looking. They’re looking at their own food, dining companions or labour. They do not care about a teenager cramming lamb into her köfte-hole, not even one weeping when her köfte has all gone. They likely don’t even care that your table-manners are poor. First, the tourist is easily forgiven for a minor failing of etiquette by non-Western countries. Second, wherever you are, you are worrying about your table-manners. If you bother to worry about them, your table-manners are very likely to be decent.
The only thing for it is what Doctor Noodles calls “exposure therapy”, and what I treat with sushi-robots.
You may know all this, but suffer, as I do, the embarrassment forged in loneliness nonetheless. The only thing for it is what Doctor Noodles calls “exposure therapy”, and what I treat with sushi-robots.
A diner who is nervous about eating alone, or being observed eating by anyone ever, can work their way up from a place where some of the tasks traditionally performed by humans are automated, and many of the other diners are solo. As a bonus: .
And we eventually get to enjoy food as fully as we can. We learn to savour it without distraction - stop playing with your phone! - and order precisely what we fancy. We remember the pots on the stove even when we're far from those who filled them. We are nourished by these memories, and we know that we'll make new ones, even when we're eating alone.
Helen Razer is your frugal food enthusiast, guiding you to the good eats, minus the pretension and price tag in her weekly Friday column, . Don't miss her next instalment, follow her on Twitter .
