Dining Alone: In the Company of Solitude

Dining Alone is a collection of fine art portraits of solo diners, shot over a span of thirty-five years. The photographer, Nancy A. Scherl, is our neighbor and a longtime customer, and we are delighted to offer signed copies of this fascinating and handsome book. Fully bound in cloth, Dining Alone features more than seventy photos. Many were taken in New York City, in recognizable locations as varied as Lexington Candy Shop, the Oyster Bar at Grand Central, and Veselka. But there are others from a restaurant inside Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, an outdoor dining spot in Trivandum, India, and a Chicago coffee shop. Much of the later portions of the book feature portraits of people dining in tents and sheds during the pandemic. "When we dine alone in public, we are observers, and we are observed," writes Scherl. "We project our own psyches into strangers we see in public, but we cannot know with accuracy what they think or what their circumstances are. We cannot easily determine whether