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An Auckland chef is seeing a rise in people eating alone at restaurants.
It is a trend seen all over the world. Solo dining reservations have risen 29 percent over the last two years in the United States, according to restaurant reservation site OpenTable.
It has also risen by 18 percent in Germany and 14 percent in the UK this year. And nearly a quarter of people in Japan eat out alone too.
Auckland chef Al Brown said there seemed to be more confidence around eating alone at restaurants these days.
"It's kind of a wonderful thing to do," he told RNZ's Sunday Morning.
"We have a lot of solo people who come in and they enjoy sitting up at the bar because there's an interplay with the bartenders. So, while you are dining by yourself, you are kind of being looked after by someone a bit more personally, which I think is lovely."
Brown added it was also a chance to meet someone new.
"You don't know who's going to be sat next to you. I think we get about eight people along the bar and we can have eight people from different walks of life, different countries, different cultures.
"And because you're next to another single diner, it's pretty easy to strike up a conversation and you see absolutely fantastic moments where people are just, you know, you've sat next to someone incredibly interesting and from a different walk of life and that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't decided to go out for dinner by yourself."
He said bartenders enjoyed it too, as they enjoyed performing and showing their skills to an audience.
