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I went to Musso and Frank Grill last week, one of my favorite restaurants, and Hollywood’s oldest, dating from 1919. I ate there alone and I didn’t try to find anybody to go with me. I realized that the maximum pleasure I could get at that moment was to sit alone on a red leather banquette at one of Musso’s smaller tables, to order a martini, a steak and a glass of red wine, to be served by the serious, unfussy waiters, to take my time, to linger, to savor the food and the atmosphere, and to enjoy it in a way that wouldn’t quite have been possible if I’d had company. It was perfect.
I wouldn’t always have felt that way. I once regarded eating alone in public as humiliating torture. In fact there was a time when I longed for Warhol’s idea for the Andy-Mat chain of restaurants to conquer the world. His concept was brilliantly simple. The restaurants were to be somewhat like the old automats, with food bought from coin operated machines, but in Warhol’s version, once you’d got your food, you scurried away into a booth for one, and watched television as you ate.
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