How to Arrive Alone and Still Have a Great Night

The message we get most is some version of: I want to come, but I do not want to walk in on my own. So here is the useful part. Almost everybody arrives alone, and the whole format is built so that you stop thinking about it within about four minutes.

YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BE STANDING ALONE

There is no seating plan here, which sounds like it would make arriving alone harder and in practice makes it much easier. Nobody is waiting at an assigned chair for you to find them. There is no moment where a host says your name to a table. You come in, your ID gets checked, your coat goes somewhere, and there is a drink in your hand before you have worked out where to stand.

The hosts are not decoration. Their actual job, the thing they are asked about the next morning, is making sure nobody spends the first half hour holding a glass near a wall. If you walk in by yourself, they will know, because they spend the whole night at the door watching people do exactly that.

ARRIVE EARLY, NOT LATE

Doors are at seven. The instinct when you are nervous is to turn up at nine when the room is full, so you can slip in. Do the opposite. At seven the room is quiet, the counters are not busy, the hosts have nothing else to do, and you get to watch it fill up around you rather than walking into it at full volume. By the time it is loud you have been there two hours and you are one of the people who was already here.

START AT A COUNTER

This is the practical trick, and it works. Go and queue for food. A counter gives you somewhere to stand that is obviously not standing around, a reason to be next to a stranger, and a conversation opener that requires no charm whatsoever — you ask what they are getting, or they ask you. Nobody has ever needed an opening line while holding a plate.

TELL A HOST

If you would like to be introduced to somebody, ask. That is the only way an introduction happens here: nobody is paired off, and nobody has decided in advance who you should meet. But a host who has been on the floor for two hours knows who came alone, who is easy to talk to, and who has been trying to find a way into a conversation for ten minutes. Use them. It is not a confession, it is a request.

AND LEAVE WHENEVER YOU LIKE

You can go at ten. You can go at three. You can decide at nine that this is not your night and leave without explaining yourself to anybody, and a host will walk you out and note the plate on your cab. The fact that leaving is completely unremarkable here is, for a lot of people, the thing that makes arriving possible.