L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon is the much lauded experimental restaurant vision of superstar French chef Joël Robuchon. His is a name that Parisians speak of with great reverence: there’s no disputing the fact that Joël Robuchon is a living legend.
It is December and I have journeyed to Paris with my friend John. We have planned our trip based on how much time each of us has available to us: I have a whole week, John only has a few days. So we spend four days together and then John leaves. I am alone.
When we are together, John and I (and his brother Chris, who visits from Geneva) nosh at homey Paris eateries: bistros, like Chez Omar, where the steak frites we consume have John licking his plate. “If I were going to be executed, ” he says, “this would be my last meal. ”
John and Chris prefer to stay on budget and I know that if I am going to visit L’Atelier Joël Robuchon—where a meal promises to be well over a hundred euros (around $130)—I will have to go alone.
Dining by myself, though, is a scary prospect. It’s not a coincidence, perhaps, that “dining alone ” sounds so much like “dying alone. ” For many, the fear of dining alone is the same fear that causes them to marry the wrong person, to maintain destructive friendships, and to participate in group suicide. Dining alone is an open display of solitude, loneliness made visible, and it’s a statement to the world that despite all your better qualities there isn’t a person on this earth who wants to sit opposite you watching you chew.
My friend Alex told me once that when she was younger she used to cry when she saw people eating by themselves. “I felt so bad for them. I thought it was the saddest thing in the world. ”
My mother sometimes, to earn my pity, will describe an afternoon of eating by herself. “I miss you, ” she’ll say. “I wish you were here. I ate all alone today in my car, outside the bagel store. ”
The image of my mother in her car, pressed up against the steering wheel eating a bagel out of a paper bag is, indeed, pitiable. Why is that? Why do people dining alone arouse such wellsprings of empathy in us? Aren’t they just nourishing themselves? Do we pity someone drinking water from a water fountain? Do we shed a tear for the guy eating trail mix in the park?
The key word, I believe, is dining. There is a difference between grabbing a sandwich at a local deli and sitting down to a Michelin-starred meal by yourself. One is an act of necessity, the other an act of luxury. Society understands when lone individuals who are hungry sit down to grab a bite for lunch. It is less forgiving when that same individual puts on a suit, combs his hair, sprays on cologne, and journeys to a restaurant by himself and asks for a table for one. Yet, this is exactly what I plan to do on this night, the night that I set out to dine at L’Atelier Joël Robuchon by myself.
I did my research earlier in the day: according to my Time Out Guide to Paris, L’Atelier Joël Robuchon does not accept reservations. The setup is a large counter where people sit and watch the chefs prepare their food. I find this thought comforting: I won’t be alone at a table, I will be at a counter like Norm on Cheers. Is Norm selfconscious when he orders his beer? Of course not. Why should I be self-conscious when I order my foie gras? I’m going to be fine.
I have dined by myself many times in America, but nowhere this fancy. I will sit for quick panini at ’ino, a lobster roll at Pearl Oyster Bar, or a Greek salad at Snack Taverna without too much self-consciousness. Almost always it’s for lunch and almost always I bring a magazine. Most often it’s the New Yorker: a perfect quick-meal companion. I can skim the cartoons, read the “Talk of the Town, ” read the reviews. If there’s a long article that catches my eye, I can start it when I place my order and finish it on the subway home. The New Yorker makes me feel safe and not alone. The question arises, as I finish getting dressed, can I bring the New Yorker in my bag—the winter fiction issue—to L’Atelier Joël Robuchon? Or will that be cheating? Will I really be there if I am safe in my comfort zone? Plus, will that look funny to arrive at the restaurant in my puffy winter jacket with a magazine under my arm?
I decide to leave it behind. I venture forth alone and determined. I am going to dine at one of Paris’s most revered restaurants, I tell myself. This will be an experience I will never forget.
The journey from the hotel to the restaurant is quite involved. John and I found our hotel online—we booked a discount trip on virginvacations.com. We got our airfare and hotel for the astonishing price of $449. As the adage goes, we got what we paid for: our hotel is dingy and far away from everything in the seventeeth “far away from everything ” arrondissement. For the first few nights there, we have no hot water. Maybe the hotel’s dinginess is part of its charm, but at this moment—dressed, coiffed, and cologned—I wish I were at a palatial hotel with tuxedoed employees escorting me to the Rolls Royce waiting for me outside. “Merci, ” I would say, slipping wads of euros into their grateful palms. As it stands, I give my room key to the man at the front desk, who regards me coolly.
“You still have electric converter? ” he asks.
This is a bone of contention between us. I forgot to purchase power converters in America and thus can’t plug in any of my electronics. I asked at the front desk for one earlier in the week and this man said, “Okay, for one hour, yes. ”
“One hour? I need for longer than that! ”
“Okay, ” he said with arched eyebrow. “You bring back when finished. ”
Since then, every time I return my room key to the desk—a required procedure before leaving the hotel—he asks for the converter. I exploit the language barrier and play dumb.
“Yes, yes, ” I say. “I have it. Thank you. ” I exit with a flourish and proceed on the twenty-minute walk to the nearest Métro stop: Malesherbes.
I love that word, Malesherbes. The reason I love it is that I purposely mispronounce it in my head. The right way to say it, in French, is Mailzairb. I pronounce it male-sherb-eez. Like herpes.
I ride the Métro to the rue du Bac stop and exit a bit nervously.
Here I am: 8 p.m. on a Wednesday night in Paris, about to dine alone at a highly distinguished, highly expensive restaurant. Who do I think I am? Most Americans my age are eating at the Olive Garden right now; why do I deserve any better? More important: how will I look to them, these fancified French people sipping aged wine in designer clothes speaking a language I barely comprehend? Not only do I not comprehend it, I mock it. Male-sherb-eez, anyone?
Maybe I should turn around, I think loudly, the voice in my head getting more and more panicky. I could go to a low-key bistro and eat steak frites like I did with John and his brother. But here I am in a suit—a suit masked by a puffy North Face jacket—and cologned and coiffed; I can’t turn back now.
I continue, following the directions in my hand. When I get close, the area grows increasingly more refined: fancy hotels, fancy stores, fancy people leaving fancy hotels to shop at fancy stores. And there it is: festooned in red Christmas lights, L’Atelier Joël Robuchon, looking exclusive and imposing yet ever so slightly welcoming.
Peering through the windows, I see what I expect to see: a large counter space with well-dressed Parisians eating and sipping wine while facing a kitchen. This isn’t so scary after all. I can handle this. I will fit right in.
I approach the door. Here’s the plan: I will open it, greet the host—“Bon soirée, ” I will say—and then declare my intention: “One. ” “Un, ” in French. “Table for un. ”
The door has no handle, so I push. When doors have no handles you push. Yet, I am surprised to find that when I push nothing happens.
“That’s odd, ” says the nervous voice in my head.
I push again. Still nothing.
Then I do something I never expected to do: I dig my fingers into the wood paneling and try to pull it open. This plan works poorly. The door doesn’t budge.
“What kind of restaurant is this? ” I think, the voice in my head enraged. “The door doesn’t open! ”
Just then, the door opens. An older Frenchman dressed elegantly stands there with a clipboard.
“Bon soirée, ” he says, eyeing me, perhaps suspiciously. “How can I help you? ” he asks in French.
“Ah, yes, ” I stammer. “Bon soirée … table por un. ”
He stares at me, confused.
“Pardon? ”
“Parlez-vous anglais? ” I squeak.
“Oui, ” he says.
“Table for one? ”
He stares again. I feel him take in my puffy jacket. “But there’s a suit underneath! ” I want to tell him.
“I’m sorry, ” he says. “Is impossible. ”
“Oh, ” I say.
“We are completely booked, monsieur. ” He shows me his clipboard filled with names.
I stand out there in the cold night air and feel myself deflate. All this planning, all this dressing, all these nerves frayed for nothing.
“Isn’t there anything? ” I plead.
“No, I’m afraid, ” he says, shaking his head. “Only eleven-thirty, ” he says, as if eleven-thirty would be the most absurd time for anyone to eat in the history of eating.
Eleven-thirty. It is eight-thirty now: that would be three hours. I could wait three hours, couldn’t I? Besides, this man might be bluffing. What if I call his bluff?
“Eleven-thirty, ” I repeat. “Okay, ” I say. “Eleven-thirty. ”
He gives me a look that says: “You can’t be serious. ”
I return with a look that insists: “I am serious. ”
“Okay, monsieur, what is your name? ”
“Adam, ” I stammer. Of course, I should have said my last name but Adam is what comes out.
“Very good, monsieur Adam, eleven-thirty, ” he concludes, closing the door behind him. I breathe in deeply: I’ve done it! I’ve penetrated the inner sanctum of finer French cuisine! Now I need to kill three hours in a strange part of town in a country where I don’t speak the language.
Next door is a beautiful hotel, the sort that matches the fantasy hotel I had in my head when I was leaving my ramshackle hotel in the seventeenth. I see beautiful people dressed beautifully traipsing through the marbled lobby and then exiting in their fur coats into polished cars. Could I sit in this hotel lobby and kill three hours?
I know the answer is no—they’d surely ask me to leave—and then I wonder why. Why don’t I feel entitled to go sit in that lobby? Well, okay, I’m not a guest there: I’m not entitled. But something more is at play. The self-doubt that forbids me from entering that lobby is the same selfdoubt that plagued me on my way to the restaurant. Once again: who do I think I am? What gives me the right to enjoy the splendors reserved for people twice my age who have accomplished great things in their lives?
What have I accomplished? I was voted “Most Likely to Be Famous ” my senior year of high school. I won the Palm Beach County fair-housing songwriting contest for a song called “My Eyes Just See Gray. ” My mom came up with the title.
Who am I to walk among titans: to share their couches, to eat their food? I know this sentiment is shared by most of my friends. Lisa, for example, uses the word fancy to describe the restaurants I enjoy in America. “Okay, I’ll go eat your fancy food with you, ” she’ll say when I talk her into going somewhere slightly more expensive than, say, the Olive Garden.
People our age belong at the Olive Garden. All-you-can-eat bread, all-you-can-eat salad: this is value, this is what young people enjoy. Why do we deserve any better?
Maybe we don’t think we deserve better because we don’t have access to anything better. Money, prestige: these are the things that allow one access to the finer things in life, aren’t they? Restaurants often succeed and fail based on the buzz surrounding them. It’s the Studio 54 effect: the proverbial velvet rope is what makes entry desirable. If everyone were granted entry, it wouldn’t be that special to enter, would it? The door to L’Atelier Joël Robuchon is the perfect metaphor: it only opens from the inside.
It only opens from the inside, that is, unless you stand out there and you persist. Ultimately it has to open: people have to leave, other people need to enter. You can fall prey to the smoke and mirrors that convince you not to enter or you can enter. The only question that remains is, will it be worth the effort?
As I ponder all this, I make my way past the hotel to a bookstore. Here’s a democratic institution if there ever was one. The finest books sit alongside the pulpiest trash and it’s left to the shopper to sort through them. You can spend $6.99 on Jackie Collins or Dostoyevsky, it’s your decision. Here, though, all the books are in French. All the books, that is, except the books on one shelf labeled “Anglais. ”
I spend the next three hours thumbing through the “Anglais ” shelf and then the time comes to return to the restaurant. I purchase a book by Zadie Smith—On Beauty— that I fall for in that three-hour period. I tuck it into my coat pocket as a security blanket: maybe I will need some reading material after all. I’m feeling pretty vulnerable.
I make my way back to the restaurant and stand outside in the cold and wait for the door to open. This is terrifying and humiliating: standing outside a door that only opens from the inside, you feel completely judged by the world. And when it doesn’t open for a few minutes you feel yourself judged poorly. Who are they to judge me poorly? Maybe I should judge them poorly and just go eat some oysters and call it a night.
Finally, it opens and two severely well-dressed couples exit laughing. I expect them to hand me their valet tickets but instead the host emerges behind them and, recognizing me, says: “Ah, Monsieur Adam, right this way. ”
My heart beats fast. I follow him into the restaurant, take off my jacket, and soak in the scenery as he leads me to a tall chair between two couples at the long communal bar overlooking the kitchen. He asks for my jacket and I quickly remove the Zadie Smith book from the coat pocket, just in case I need it. I also remove a Moleskine notebook, a pen, and a camera.
“You have all you need, sir? ” quips the host.
“Oui, ” I say. “Merci. ”
I sit down and take in my surroundings. Ah, here I am. I have arrived. The room is dark. I have no menu. I smile at a waitress pouring wine for an older gentleman who scrutinizes her with his eyes. She doesn’t smile back.
I place the Zadie Smith book, the Moleskine notebook, the camera, and the pen on the counter in front of me. The man to my right shoots me a glance and then looks back at his wife. I wait a few moments to be acknowledged by the waitress. As I wait, I lift the Moleskine and the pen and begin to write:
12/21/05
L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon
Thoughts as gathered at dinner at the bar.
Red menus, red glasses …
Everything is a bit of a battle here…for the table,
for the waitress’s attention.
Just then the waitress comes over.
“Bon soirée, ” she says. Then she says something else in French and I say, as I’ve grown accustomed to saying, “Parlez vous anglais? ”
“Oui, ” she answers.
She hands me a menu and asks me what I would like to drink. I tell her I am going to have the tasting menu— which, I believe, surprises her a bit. This is a serious thing to order for someone so young and American sitting awkwardly at the bar with a book, a notebook, a pen, and a camera in front of him.
“What wine do you recommend for the tasting menu? ” I query.
She removes a wine list from a shelf. She points to the wine by the glass and suggests the Pinot Blanc. The price isn’t too outrageous so I give the nod. She scurries off.
Now I feel very alone. The couples to my left and right are really chatting it up. I lift the Zadie Smith book and try to read from where I left off in the store but it’s too dark. I return it to the counter and stare into the kitchen. I see a chef carving long pieces of meat off a leg with a hoof on it.
The hoof is a powerful image and I stare at it, captivated. This hoof, this animal foot that once traipsed across prairies and through mountain springs, reminds me that I am a meat-eater, a carnivore who stands fiercely atop the food chain. Why am I nervous to be here? I am a mighty, powerful, bloodthirsty beast. I’m a brave warrior surrounded by fellow warriors. That’s what I’m missing, I realize: a sense of entitlement. By biological imperative, I am entitled to be here. That’s not my leg the chef is carving with a long, sharp blade.
The waitress returns with my wine and I thank her with a beastlike “merci. ” Then she places a bread basket on the counter in front of me and exits.
I take a piece of bread, spread it with butter, and take a bite. I wash it down with wine and nod my approval.
Then something peculiar happens. The man to my right puts his hand on my bread basket and slides it so it’s in front of him and his female companion. He doesn’t take any bread out of it, he just slides it possessively and returns to his conversation.
What just happened? Was that an aggressive maneuver? Am I being challenged? Should I claim the basket back?
The basket is too far away, actually, for me to claim it back. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on, when the first course arrives. It’s in a mug and I have no idea what it is.
I studied the tasting menu (which was in French) only for a brief moment, long enough to know that I wanted to order it—why not taste it all, I figured, during this once-in-a-lifetime experience?—and now I have no idea what, specifically, I have ordered.
In the mug is a layer of brown with foam on top. I take a bite and realize that it’s foie gras. Ah, yes, I remember. This is a foie gras cappuccino. The foam picks up the foie gras’s essence and I admire the strange alchemy of the flavors and textures.
The waitress returns to refill my water glass, and, seeing that the bread basket has moved, she moves it back so it’s in front of me. She walks away and the man turns and regards me and then turns back to his female companion.
“Aha! ” I cheer, in my head. “Now who possesses the bread basket? I possess it, that’s who! ”
But before I can declare a clear and utter victory, the female companion gestures to the bread basket and the man slides it back over. She takes a piece from it and gives me a cool, mean look.
Hey, what did I do? I want to say. But I can’t because I don’t speak the language. And there I am again, without a bread basket to show for myself. A waiter takes away my eaten foie gras cappuccino and replaces it with the second course: a carpaccio, I believe, of scallop. Some kind of fish. Each sliver is coated with spices. There’s pepper, there’s caviar. Something briny.
“Mmmm, ” groans the voice in my head, finally getting more comfortable in these environs (the wine is helping). Texture is the name of the game here, as these spices are crunchy and snappy and completely different from and complementary to the smoothness of the fish.
“What are these spices? ” I wonder as I chew. If I had a companion here we could talk about it.
“Is that coriander I detect? ” he might say.
“No, ” I’d say. “I believe those are fennel seeds. ”
“Preposterous! ”
“I dare say, you’re awfully rude. ”
My imaginary companion is Oscar Wilde.
Companionship, I realize, is what I crave most as this meal progresses. There are times where being alone is incredibly pleasurable. There are times I love to be by myself. I love to go to museums by myself, on rainy afternoons I love to see movies by myself. I’ve gone to Broadway shows by myself, I’ve gone on rides at Disney World by myself (because my friends didn’t want to wait for Peter Pan’s Flight, the fools). Solitude is not something I fear, it’s something I frequently desire.
But here at this restaurant, in this strange environment where it’s dark and the people look serious, I feel extraordinarily alone. I feel out of place on many levels: I don’t speak the language; I’m not versed in food and wine the way many Parisians are; I’m not monied or elite; I’m not well dressed: my suit is lame and has cat hair on it.
Yet, when I really allow the solitude to sink in it suddenly becomes empowering. People don’t know me here. I don’t speak the language. So what do I care what anyone thinks? Let them judge me with their silent stares, I’ll judge them right back. For all they know I could be a famous American writer here to document all of their antics. Actually, I am a writer here to document all of their antics. I don’t need companionship: my companionship is the audience in my head—the one that will hear these stories when the meal is over. I imagine myself standing before an audience relating my experience: What’s the deal with French people and their bread baskets? I say like Jerry Seinfeld in front of a red curtain. What’s the deal with that?
As if on cue, the waitress returns and slides the bread basket back in my direction. Another victory!
She replaces the carpaccio with a plate that I can’t parse in any way. Is it fish? Is it brain? I have no idea. It’s covered with truffles, though, and their flavor is loud.
“My, these truffles are glorious! ” I declare to my imaginary audience. “I wish you were here to try them. ” The audience watches with great interest as I nibble and consider. “They taste fungal, ” I reveal. “And earthy. But not unpleasant. ”
When I finish, the brains are removed and my wineglass is empty.
“Another glass? ” asks the waitress.
“Why, yes. ”
“Perhaps a red? ” she suggests.
“Wonderful, ” I answer. “What do you suggest? ”
“Medoc. ” She removes a wine list and points. “It won’t overpower the fish but it’s strong enough for the lamb. ”
“Excellent. ”
My imaginary audience watches as I steal another piece of bread and gloat to my bitter neighbors. The whole bread business is so bizarre that it is, in its way, a perfect thing to happen: a circumstance so peculiar that it flips the tone of the evening from tragedy to comedy. Whereas before I was timid and frightened, now I am distanced and laughing. Bread basket antics have made my experience relatable and surely the audience is on my side.
The waitress returns with the Medoc and the soup course—less an actual soup and more a curious interpretation of soup: a gelatinous green layer on top of a mousselike brown layer. There are mushrooms mixed in and the whole thing is creamy and luscious.
“Notice the way Robuchon plays with texture, ” I tell my audience. “He makes food that is delicious but also surprising. That’s why he’s so important. ” The audience nods in agreement with my insight.
After the gelatinous soup, there’s another unidentifiable course. I identify bacon, I identify potatoes. “Sweet, foamy, light, ” I declare in my head.
An audience member rises and says, “You really should pay more attention to what you ordered. ”
Security immediately removes him from my cranium.
Then there’s lamb. And Robuchon’s famous mashed potatoes.
“The secret, ” I tell my audience, “is an equal ratio of butter to potato. ”
My mother and grandmother rise up and start booing. “That’s so unhealthy! You’re going to have a heart attack. There’s heart disease in your family. ”
“Leave him alone, ” says Ruth Reichl from the balcony. “Let him eat what he wants. ”
As reality blurs with fantasy I finally begin to understand what is miraculous about dining alone: this audience isn’t real. There is no audience to react to your choices, to pass judgment on what you’re eating. You can cater to your every whim, your every desire, without scrutiny. And the story you tell later is a story you shape yourself, one that either includes or omits significant details. The experience is yours alone.
The waitress places a small glass in front of me with tequila, chopped fruit, ices, and a fruit chip. Orange? Passion fruit? Who knows.
And then another dessert arrives. A very decadent, whipped chocolate mousse. I’m not a chocolate person especially but I dig in with abandon. Do I finish every last bite or do I show restraint and only eat half? The answer is mine to keep forever.
Soon the check arrives. It is 1 a.m. and the bill is 129 euros. That’s close to $170.
“Well, ” I tell myself as I hand the waitress my debit card. “I’ve done it. I’ve dined alone at L’Atelier Joël Robuchon. ”
When I look around me, I see that I am basically by myself. The restaurant is closing up and I’m one of the last remaining. Alone, as I started, but much better off. I feel full and happy. The secret, it turns out, is a psychological one. I became the star of “The Story of My Paris Dinner ” and somehow I was no longer alone: I was there with all of the people who’d be hearing this story later. I used a writerly trick: I shaped a narrative to fit this moment, a warming narrative, a comedy, one with a happy ending.
Too many people, I think, use a preexisting narrative in situations like these. That’d be too sad, they think when considering a meal out alone. They think of sappy Meg Ryan movies where she sits at a table by herself, sorrowful music playing, rain trickling down the window. She stirs her coffee slowly with a spoon. No, they think, that won’t be me. I’d rather stay in my hotel.
And they do. They stay in their hotels and eat something fast, something easy. They want a preapproved story, one that requires all characters to dine in pairs. And they convince themselves that they’re not missing much, that it’s just food. But I know, my experience over now, that they are missing so much more. When you dine out alone you create an event, one that is amplified by the significance of your destination. It’s one thing to eat at Bob’s Big Boy by yourself, it’s another to eat at Joël Robuchon. And just as with any other event that is exclusive and unique, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, it will live on forever in your memory like a precious artifact.
So as I rise from my seat, I feel the certainty that this night—despite the bread, despite my nerves, despite the cost—deserves a special display in my mental museum, to be studied and considered over the course of a lifetime. I imagine myself as an old man gazing upon the display as I’m fed Jell-O in my government discount nursing home.
The maître d’ hands me my jacket and leads me to the door, opening it for me one last time.
“Good night, Monsieur Adam, ” he says, smiling, as I make my way out into the cool night air.
“Bonsoir, ” I say, smiling back. I return to the Paris night with my camera in one pocket and my Moleskine in the other, my Zadie Smith book under my arm and, protected and fussed over in the newest corridor of my brain, the Hope Diamond of dining out: the precious stone that’s been this night, the night I dined in Paris alone.