A meal for one should never cost £350. Solo diners are being ripped off – again

No rush, no conversation to make, no chewing to witness from across the table. 

Whether it was grabbing food in town before going to the cinema, eating dinner in a hotel restaurant while on a work trip or having pizza and cheap red wine in Venice on a solo holiday, I always enjoyed when it was just me, my food, and a healthy dose of people watching to pass the time.

But this isn’t the type of blessing I’d expect to pay for twice.

Yet this week, I found out that if I was dining solo at the luxury restaurant, Alex Dilling at the Hotel Café Royal – I’d be expected to fork out the price of two dinners, even if I was just eating one.

The double Michelin-starred eatery charges £350 for a table for two for its tasting menu and charges the exact same price for a person who is dining alone – and next month it is due to rise £40 – meaning eating with just your own company will cost almost £400.

Only the privileged few would be able to split that kind of cost between two, let alone one – but it’s yet another example of how people are being stung with the ‘single tax’ during a cost of living crisis.

The owners justified their pricing by explaining that they ‘only have 11 tables in the restaurant, which means that we do require a minimum spend for two people for solo diners’. 

There I was, naively assuming that the prices on a menu were assigned to the food, rather than the spaces on the table.

With as many as 18million adults in England and Wales alone estimated to be single, and with an increase in the acceptability of solo dining, perhaps they would be wise to add a few single tables to the floorplan – or at least squeeze one up against the wall.

Now you might think that this is the sort of extreme first world problem usually consigned to the luxury wealth pages of Financial Times, but solo supplements affect all sorts of activities and basic human needs no matter the size of your wallet.

I’ve never dined in a Michelin starred restaurant in my life. In fact, I don’t even think I’ve looked through the window of one. But I have been charged extra for eating alone.

It seems supermarkets rarely offer deals on dinners for one. Romantic ‘dine in for two’ is usually the theme: two mains, two desserts, one side and a bottle of wine.

There’s nothing sadder than asking a cashier at Marks and Spencer if she’ll just let you have the wine and the dessert for the same price.

Finding a recipe that caters for individual portions is an equally painful task. It feels as though our culinary culture is based on the presumption that we live in a nuclear household of 2.4 children and only eat dinner in groups of even numbers.

And it’s not just our food that carries a solo tax – according to financial services provider Hargreaves Lansdown, the penalty for being single is on average £860 a month. 

That includes the cost of rent, bills, food and travel if you don’t have a partner to share the costs.

There are even tax breaks for people who are married or in civil partnerships. The cost-of-living is something that has affected all of us, but it has impacted single people even more so. 

Honestly, it doesn’t feel like it would be such a bad idea to get married to your best single pal – and enjoy those capital gains and inheritance tax benefits you might only ever dream of! 

But back to dining – let’s remember there could be a plethora of reasons as to why someone may choose to eat alone. They may even be married with kids and this is the one night a week they get to spend some time by themself for the sake of their happiness or sanity.

Perhaps the solo patron has only been made recently single – as a widow or widower. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to face the world again after losing a partner, only to be told that dining alone is either not allowed, or will cost you double.

Or maybe their newly-found singledom has happened through choice and they’re looking to turn over a new leaf, not have to take out a bank loan to enjoy some classy food. It’s no wonder some people stay in relationships longer than they should. 

The cost of eating, sleeping and living has made it even more difficult for people to manage leaving a relationship without incurring huge financial costs.

It’s about time that society accepted singledom – and solo dining – as something worthy of praise, not punishment.