We go to restaurants for different reasons and, at least occasionally, we go to be left alone. I certainly do. I have eaten solo in restaurants perhaps 1,000 times in my life, often for work, but many times simply because I crave moments of indolent solitude. So why is that so hard to achieve?

It has certainly become more difficult lately. Once you go to a place long enough to feel comfortable, the people there start to feel comfortable with you as well. The pizzeria near my house has a nice patio, a shady spot enjoyed as a substitute living room by much of the neighborhood. The owner saw me so often this spring and summer that he started joining me for a beer. Then he began to ask about my work, the girl he saw me with the previous week, my family, my hobbies, life in general. The sighs, reluctant answers and other signs that I wanted to be left alone went ignored.

This is not an unusual phenomenon. There's another place near my office where I used to be a regular customer for lunch. No longer. Yes, the service was bad, but the real drag was that the owner kept sitting down at my table and chatting with me. I could be in the middle of a great book, patiently waiting for the remarkably surly waitress to finally bring my meal, when an apparition would approach, pull out a chair and sit down. At first, merely as a matter of form, he would ask rhetorically if I minded. I believe the last time I went there was the time he sat down without asking.

Being a restaurant owner is a tough job, and no part is more difficult for most people than maintaining the balance between customers and friends. Good restaurant owners are good hosts, taking care of their guests, caring about them just as they would people they know separately from work. And naturally, dining is meant to be a social activity. Thus when some owners see him there — the solo customer, sipping a Pilsner and lurking behind a thick novel — they feel they should come up and say something so that he doesn't have to eat alone. But what if he wants to?

Perhaps it is a question of the level of the restaurant. I've seen four-star chefs such as Vito Mollica work the room and greet guests at Allegro, and it is charming; he is an extremely charismatic and caring person. I probably wouldn't go to Allegro or another four-star restaurant to sit alone and read. But if I did, I believe they'd have enough sense — and sensitivity — to leave me alone.

Sometimes it's not just being left alone but the breaking down of the formal wall that is difficult to understand. Eating in a restaurant is a business relationship, after all, one that carries with it some measure of formality. At another restaurant last week I was placing an order when the owner, recognizing me, asked Jinak jak se máš? or "How are you, otherwise?" using the informal ty form, though she doesn't even know my name or what I do. I wished I could've remembered the Czech retort to improper informal address — some question asking if we ever herded cows together — but it escaped me at the moment, so I just said fine, thanks. Another one crossed off the list.