Dining mashup: Things you overhear at Amato’s Ale House

When the opportunity arises for me to fly solo for dinner, I experience an unnerving combination of self-pity and giggly excitement. Life is so often hectic that I relish the chance to relax a bit on my own; at the same time, it seems terribly depressing that I’d be eating alone in a sea of couples, families, and misbehaving friends. But so it was a few weeks back at Amato’s Ale House in the Highlands.

In theory, I can do what I want when the wine and entrée come and I’m alone — read a book, scour Twitter, talk to myself. But what I’ve recently discovered is that this solo eating allows me the chance to listen in on other people’s conversations. I’m not really invading their privacy, mind you; think of it as an invitation — an open door to the lives of people I will never see again. I hope.

Thanks to this unsolicited entertainment, I’m able to bring you Out Front’s first-ever dining mashup — a cacophony of conversation interspersed with bites of salad and sips of house Chardonnay. This buzz of strange humor and randomness came mostly from a young family to my left, and two tables of business cohorts in front of me. It began, ominously, with a three-year-old sticking French fries up her nose.

“No sweetie, you eat the French fries, but not in your nose.” Then turning to her husband, slumped in the chair across from her, “So it makes sense that I would get a new copier because if I can’t copy those fliers, I might as well just — no, no, not ketchup! How am I supposed to get that out of your nose?! — What was I saying? Oh, the copier. So if I get the copier, we can definitely do all the ransom notes on those, too — LISA! Put down the fries!”

Lamb goes well with pesto, it turns out. It always has. And what I realized with glee, digging into a triumvirate of goat cheese, tzatziki, and pesto, is that Greek salads are rarely done with this much creativity.

“I don’t think I was that drunk,” the financier lashed out between crackles of nachos in yellowing teeth. “I mean, sure, I was tipsy, but Frank couldn’t have known that.”

Frank, I supposed, was his stale, unobservant boss. And as I later learned, wrapping my mouth around slivers of pita topped with nubbins of charred lamb, he was also the worst boss this side of JP Morgan Chase.

“Who dresses in suspenders anymore? Who wears a bolo tie to work?!” Who indeed.

And the wine — that angsty, tight-lipped dame in a glass — calmed a bit when treated to the affection of buttery chèvre.

Outside, the orange sun launched across the cityscape, and the lights of cars stalled panic red on the freeway.

“You know, it was really all about the glue, the kind of glue — what do you call it? — the cement-y kind with Chinese instructions on the back?” This from somewhere in the corner booth, occupied by middle-aged ladies sipping pale pints.

“Rubber cement,” I mumbled as the last vestige of lamb disappeared. The waitress came by and, perhaps with a touch of sympathy for me in my alone-ness, asked if I wanted another big glass of wine.

“Yes — yes, please,” I quickly nodded. “Oh, and also the bread pudding if you don’t mind.” As if, somehow, serving a singleton was an onus she just couldn’t bear.

“But let’s talk about you!” the sharp-eyed, mealy-haired, pinstriped businessman gushed in front of me. “I don’t know how you’ve been doing. How’s accounting? How is John? Getting along with that leg of his?”

“LISA! For the last time, chicken is not makeup, it’s a food. You eat it. Like this.” And with an impressive show of strength, Lisa’s frazzled mother ripped apart her chicken breast with her bare hands, elbowing the financier behind her. Lisa proceeded to shriek-guffaw while Dad sat, impervious, and gnawed on a meager collection of wings bathed in blue cheese.

“I’m SO sorry, I was just trying to show my daughter — ”

“Oh, it’s no problem at all!” the financier rang with a bit of tried pleasantness. “I have a ton of other suits. I’ll just get it dry cleaned.” She grinned sheepishly as he brushed specks of gravy off his pin stripes and the two tried to revert to normal conversation. Something in him reminded me of a cross between Bill Lumbergh and Michael Scott. Something in her reminded me of Pam.

And perhaps there were more shenanigans that night — more drunkenness, more french fries up the nose, more anxiety about rubber cement. But, to be honest, I wasn’t paying much attention. Because when faced with an apricot-studded, caramel sauce-draped, whipped cream-capped plate of bread pudding, you can’t pay attention to much of anything else.

Food For Thought is a culinary column by Jeff Steen, Out Front’s food writer. r See more food articles at ofcnow.co/food