Social Distance Dining

There will be millions of stories coming out of the Coronavirus era recounting the problems with dining - a communal activity we are trying to work out in an era many of us spend in solitary isolation. Many restaurants are attempting to generate some revenue (and keep valuable staff employed) by coming up with creative ides for menus they prepare but diners either make or at least warm up at home. Of course, not every dining experience can be replicated this way however, and so some favorite restaurants are shuttered. including the tragic closings of restaurants (which we may hope are temporary but surely many favorite spots may never reopen).

Even when the danger of this virus ebbs, as it surely will eventually, I suspect the face of dining (and by extension, of wine consumption) will be irrevocably changed for a long time. What sort of distance measures will we contend with in the future? Amid all the restaurant closings, there is a new restaurant opening in Sweden. The restaurant is called Bord för En, which translates as Table for One, a name that summarizes the restaurant’s admittedly radical solution: located in a meadow, it is a restaurant without walls (and without servers for that matter) and with a single table for a single person. The kitchen is some distance away, and the food is delivered to the table in a basket sent to the table by rope and pulley.

Here’s how the restaurant’s website describes itself:

The dining room at Bord för En in Värmland, Sweden (Photo: Bord för En)

“A table. A chair. In the middle of a warm summer meadow. Bord för En is a dining experience in privacy. No wait staff and no other guests. The food is sent to you in a basket from the restaurant kitchen window.”

The restaurant of course only takes one reservation at a time, but it’s open from 10 in the morning until the kitchen closes at 10:45 at night. And lest you worry about dining in a field at 9 or 10 at night, keep in mind that with the coming of summer (the restaurant opens May 2), the days in Northern Sweden are very long indeed.

Is this the shape of things to come? Well, I’ve been dining a little like this for six weeks and it gets a little tiring. I don’t have a meadow, and I have two cats for company (who do not dine with me though a few times I’ve invited them), but I’m keeping inspiration while cooking for one is hard to maintain at a gourmet level. On the other hand, I do always get to pick the wine.