ALONE TOGETHER : Overcoming Those Reservations for One

It is a fate that makes otherwise brave people turn tail; civilized matrons and teen-agers alike spend hours planning to avoid it.

The affliction? Dining Alone.

Solitary confinement with a lonely plate of food--however gloriously cooked, in whatever culinary cathedral you’d care to name--sends people like us into panic.

We make do with a tuna sandwich or take-home pizza, or wretched room service when we travel. This is sad enough, but it’s far better than the public humiliation of going to a restaurant and sitting there all alone, while all around you people are talking, flirting, doing deals, arguing, discussing. . . . Sure, it’s possible to savor a fabulous meal all by yourself; it is also possible to be miserable while you do it.

Sad tale No. 2: You never lack for companionship, but you and your spouse/lover/friend are bored with routine and tired of the same old crowd. You long to try an exotic restaurant, but which one? And once there, what will you order? How do you know if you’re getting haute cuisine or commiting culinary hara-kiri?

Those are the problems; here’s the solution: Eat with strangers.

Dozens of classes, clubs and organizations in Southern California devote themselves to food, eating and people, not necessarily in that order. Some are casual and inexpensive, others are spiffy and upscale, a few are just one-time-only excursions. But they all offer food and people. Together. Where they belong.

Tomi Ryan has been herding people to restaurants for four years as the guiding force and namesake of Tomi Ryan’s Ethnic Dining Group. Besides the restaurant visits, offered through alternative learning centers such as Everywoman’s Village and Contemporary Concepts, Ryan has taught cooking classes at more than a dozen community colleges in the area.

“We want to introduce people to the cultures and to the different tastes of ethnic food,” Ryan said of her group. This includes such familiar cuisine as Chinese and Spanish, as well as the more exotic such as Philippine and Ethiopian.

In almost every case, Ryan and the restaurant choose the menu in advance, so members just have to pay a fee (about $17 to $21 per person, drinks not included) and show up hungry. You get more--and usually better--food as a member of these groups than if you just happened by on your own. Dinners also include instructing patrons on what dish goes with what--how to use that odd-looking wad of dough with that strange pile of alien substance. The restaurants do their best--they want you back.

I joined a group of about 50 for an evening at Gaylord, an Indian restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard. Ryan’s crowd had a room to itself for a sit-down feast: waves of courses, starting with vegetable pakoras and chicken tikka and wandering through cheese-and-spinach sag paneer, chicken tandoori, leavened flat bread, rice, raita, papud wafers, and a legume dish that was earthy and delicious.

And around the corner, a seer, hired by Ryan, read our palms. (My novel will be published, and I will have great success, thank you.)

“We have been doing this now for a great many years,” said group member Ken Bennewaite. He and wife Norma sat at a table for 10--mostly friends and family. They had met one of the couples at an Ethnic Dining Group function a year before.

“We kind of bounce around,” Bennewaite said. “There’s a definite difference (among the groups). It’s much harder to strike up friendships in bigger groups.” The Bennewaites have gone on 11 of Ryan’s excursions.

Fifi Chao’s Gourmet Fun Club is based in, but not limited to, Orange County. The night I joined them, about 50 members of the group occupied one end of the Towers in Laguna Beach, right on the ocean, with mirrored ceilings and walls--even a mirrored piano in the lounge--reflecting the water in all directions. An elegant six-course dinner was served: green salad, John Dory in lime-cilantro sauce, grapefruit sorbet, medallions of venison in truffle sauce with celeriac puree, a selection of cheeses and mango mousse cake in raspberry sauce. A representative of the William Hill winery poured a vertical tasting of five Chardonnays and four Cabernets. Club members paid $35 each for this extravaganza; non-members, $40. A definite bargain.

Like Ryan, Chao has worked as a cooking teacher, consultant and caterer. Now, she teaches occasional cooking classes while concentrating on her newsletter, Chao’s Dinesty, and the club.

Most of her evenings accommodate 40-50 diners. “More than that is too many,” she says.

Janet Benjamin of Tiburon, when confronted with the dread specter of Dining Alone on business trips, decided to do something about it. She launched Checking In, “a network designed to introduce you to other traveling business professionals like yourselves,” she wrote in the first issue. She promises to recommend the best health clubs, restaurants, night clubs, bookstores and plays for travelers who subscribe to her $25-per-year quarterly four-page newsletter. (The summer 1987 edition focuses on Los Angeles.)

Members need only call one of the several restaurants listed, identify themselves as Checking In members and ask if there are any others of their ilk who need company for dinner. It’s so simple it’s brilliant. At worst, you may get stuck with the Abominable Salesman--but then, you could always skip dessert. At best, you will enjoy lively conversation with your meal--and you won’t be alone.

The system isn’t quite ready: I called every restaurant on Benjamin’s list, 10 of them, and although nine had heard of Checking In--indeed, were anxiously awaiting the onslaught of traveling strangers--not one restaurant had ever received a request from people wanting to Check In. Except for my plaintive, futile inquiries.

Unlike the above groups, the fledgling 30-member Westside Cooking Club does not concentrate on restaurants but also organizes cooking classes, pool parties, even a cherry-picking excursion and, recently, a private guided tour of Williams-Sonoma. Legal secretary Julie Winsen and Roy Young, a vice president of a market research company, pooled a mutual interest in food and organized the club last January. Membership costs $25 a year, plus fees for each event; a three-hour class on cold summer soups, for instance, costs members $20, non-members $25. Those who shy away from crowds will be happy to hear that it is still a small group.

And, lest we forget, the familiar standby: The quarterly telephone-book-size UCLA Extension catalogue has listed restaurant tours for years. The tours usually focus on a specific cuisine or geographical area: Indian or Latin American food, Chinatown, etc.

Try them all, groups, clubs and classes, until you feel truly comfortable. “You see pretty much the same people over and over,” Ken Bennewaite said about Ryan’s group, but it applies to the other organizations as well.

And that’s the whole point, of course: After eating with some strangers a few times, you may notice that you’re eating with friends.

PEOPLE TO EAT WITH

Ethnic Dining Group, 2188 Latimer Lane, Los Angeles 90024; (213) 474-4175.

Gourmet Fun Club, 386 E. Yale Loop, Irvine, Calif. 92714; (714) 552-1258.

Checking In, 98 Main St., Tiburon, Calif. 94920; (415) 435-2496.

Westside Cooking Club, 10430 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 803, Los Angeles 90024; (213) 657-6160.

UCLA Extension, 10995 Le Conte Ave., Los Angeles 90024; (213) 206-8120.