Hi all,
In the next year or so I'll be looking to take some solo holidays and will definitely want to include some fine dining on my trips.
For those of you that regularly fine dine solo, what have been the stand out restaurants for this in your experience?
I'm based in the UK, so European locations will be easiest for me to get to, but open to countries further afield. I'm a woman (that's also not white), so locations generally safe for solo women of colour travellers would be my main requirement. For whatever reason, travelling to the USA and Australia doesn't really appeal to me, but will keep an open mind if there's somewhere you think is amazing specifically for solo travellers!
Photos for interest – some fine dining experiences I've had over the years:
– 1-3 – La Dame de Pic, London (tragically now closed)
– 4 – Kagurazaka Ishikawa, Tokyo
– 5 – Galvin at Windows, London (also now closed)
– 6-7 – The Beach House, Oxwich
– 8 – Sketch Lecture Room & Library, London
Most of those photos are 8ish years old and before I had a decent phone camera 🫠
by Dry-Coffee-1846
4 Comments
Denmark and the Nordic countries? I find most restaurants accommodate single diners aside from Alchemist
Seconding the Nordic countries. I did Denmark and Norway solo in the past two years and felt very safe. In my experience, Alchemist was the only one that didn’t allow solo dining. For the rest, even if they don’t list it, they’re usually fine if you email ahead and go on weekdays.
The French Laundry has a solo dining table in an alcove overlooking the kitchen; it’s a wonderful place experience with interaction from the chef.
Pic in London was the only restaurant that had my birthday on file (without me having to tell them, I just mentioned it off-hand in the middle of one meal!) so I feel your loss. Copenhagen/nordics are the obvious destination, but might be hard to book the top places. I would try Basque country, where Bilbao/ San Sebastian has many easily reachable places e.g. Azurmendi was good solo but so was the Ola in Bilbao. Alternatively Barcelona area which has quite a few counters but also a tradition for tasting menus even in non-fine restaurants, e,g. Dos Pebrots. Food was great but I didn’t feel the staff were quite as chatty as in e.g Portugal.
Otherwise for places where I felt interesting things happened all the time were: Steirereck in Vienna, Desarma in Funchal Madeira, Zilte in Antwerp, JY’s in Colmar, Crissier in Lausanne.