Nashville
Alone

PRACTICAL SAMPLE

Eating Alone, in Practice

Nashville makes eating alone easy, provided you choose the setting deliberately.

Counter-service places, from the hot chicken counters and biscuit shops to the meat-and-three steam lines, are built around a single diner as a matter of course. You order, you carry your own tray or your own basket, you sit. Nobody times your meal against a table turn. For a woman on her own these are the best format in the city, and they happen also to serve some of its best food, which is a rare and useful coincidence.

Sit-down restaurants take slightly more strategy. Book online or call ahead for a bar seat or a small two-top rather than assuming one will be offered, and say plainly when you book that the table is for one. A bar seat, where offered, is usually the better choice than a table in the middle of a dining room: faster service, a better view of the work, and conversation available without being required. Restaurant staff in a city with this many touring musicians, session players and business travelers see a single diner often enough that a woman eating alone is an ordinary sight.

A free excerpt from Nashville Alone.