Monterey
Alone

PRACTICAL SAMPLE

Dining Alone in Monterey

Monterey has excellent casual restaurants where eating alone draws no attention: fish and chips at the Fisherman’s Wharf spots, Mexican food, Italian, sushi and farm-to-table places. Ordering seafood in a seafood town makes sense.

Breakfast and lunch are the lowest-pressure meals to eat alone, so if dinner feels daunting early in a trip, start there. When you want a real dinner without a long sit-down, the bar of a good restaurant such as Schooners is often the best seat in the house: you get the full kitchen’s food and easy conversation if you want it. Tell the host plainly that you would like a seat at the bar or a small table. A book or notebook signals that you would rather be left alone. Some of the simplest meals of a solo trip are assembled from the Tuesday market on Alvarado Street or a fish vendor at the wharf and eaten on a bench by the water.

A free excerpt from Monterey Alone.