Eating Alone Abroad, Without the Awkwardness

Plenty of people who are perfectly comfortable traveling alone will still eat dinner standing at a convenience store rather than sit down by themselves in a restaurant. It's one of the most common quiet limitations in travel, and it costs people the best meals of their trip. The discomfort is real, but it's almost entirely solvable with a few practical choices.

Sit at the counter

This is the single most useful piece of advice on the subject. A counter seat solves nearly every problem of dining alone at once: you're facing the kitchen instead of an empty chair, there's something to watch, the staff are right there, and in most food cultures a single diner at the bar is completely unremarkable.

It also tends to get you better service and, frequently, better food — the person cooking can see you, and solo counter diners are the customers chefs most enjoy feeding.

Choose the right kind of restaurant

Some places are built for solo diners and some are built for groups, and the difference is visible from the doorway. Noodle counters, ramen shops, tapas bars, izakaya, delis, market stalls, wine bars, and anywhere with a bar you can eat at are all designed around individuals.

Large round tables, set menus for two, and dining rooms full of families are a harder room to be alone in. Not impossible — just unnecessarily difficult when the alternative is right there.

Eat at the hours that suit you

Arriving slightly before the local dinner rush gets you an easy table, an unhurried server, and a room that fills up around you rather than one you walk into. Arriving at peak time as a solo diner sometimes means a long wait for a table a restaurant would rather give to four people, which is where the awkwardness actually comes from.

The same trick works in reverse for lunch — the tail end of the lunch service is one of the most relaxed times to eat alone anywhere.

Bring something, but not your phone

Having something to do with your hands and eyes removes almost all the discomfort. A book, a notebook, a guidebook, a journal — anything that makes you look occupied rather than abandoned.

A phone works too, but less well. Scrolling makes the meal disappear; you'll finish without remembering what you ate. A physical book or a notebook keeps you in the room, which is the entire point of having gone out.

The countries where this is easiest

Solo dining is culturally routine in a large part of the world. Japan is the outstanding example — the whole restaurant infrastructure of counters, ticket machines, and single-seat booths exists partly for people eating alone, and nobody registers it. Much of East and Southeast Asia is similarly relaxed about it.

Places built around long family meals — parts of southern Europe and Latin America — take slightly more nerve at dinner, though lunch is easy everywhere. If you're new to eating alone, this is worth knowing when you're choosing where to try it first.

The part nobody mentions

Eating alone in a country where you don't speak the language is one of the more reliably good experiences in travel, because it's the situation in which strangers most often talk to you. Nobody interrupts a couple or a group of four. A person alone at a counter with a book gets asked where they're from — and that conversation is frequently the thing you remember about the whole city.

The bottom line

Counter seat, right kind of restaurant, slightly off-peak, something to read. Four small decisions that turn the meal you were dreading into the one you look forward to — and open up every restaurant in the city instead of the handful you can get through with a takeaway container.

This piece reflects our own research and testing, current as of publish. Details change — always confirm current specifics before you go. Some links above are affiliate links: we may earn a commission at no cost to you, which helps keep the hacks free.