The Hoof Cafe @ Toronto, Canada ***

Cotechino (Pork Sausage) & Sauerkraut

Business travel is a funny beast. While many make much of the indulgences an expense account enables, fundamental barriers to pure enjoyment (besides the work part of course) are the uneasiness of unfamiliarity and the insecurity of isolation. Humans thrive in communities; when a person is dislocated from his or her geographic milieu, the effects can be distressing. What should I do? With whom should I do it with? While tourist travel presumes volition, the corporate variety typically does not, and such in-built constraints as office location make a rich experience that much more effortful to attain.

Perhaps I just haven’t been doing this for long enough, but I still get an absolute thrill when I find out that work is sending me someplace new. Seriously, who in their right mind wouldn’t get excited when colleagues describe one must-try restaurant with such glowing praise as, “meat lovers paradise” and “outrageously awesome offal.”

Carniverous delights being on the high end on my priority list, despite bitter cold and knee-high snow drifts, it was with a spring in my step that I set out in search of Toronto’s The Black Hoof. While dismayed by the limited menu displayed on a single chalk board in the corner (no foie gras!?!), it was with great anticipation that I parked myself on a barstool and waited to be amazed. Indeed, the Caramelized Milk & Onion Perogies were a pleasant, gyoza-esque novelty, but even more enjoyable was the conversation with my new friend Jeff, a barstool neighbor who gamely offered a taste off his plate.

Solitude is a frequent (and potentially unecessary) complaint among the “road warrior” class. Indeed, in the 1999 cult classic film Fight Club, the travel-weary character Tyler bemoans (in his view)  the tedious exercise of making “single-serving friends.” To my mind, when I strike up a conversation on an airplane, in a waiting room, or even at a restaurant, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Why intentionally cultivate the alienation from one’s neighbors that modern life already so easily avails?

The next time you’re in a new city by yourself try a wild experiment: talk to strangers. Trust me, if you stop closing yourself to new experiences you might just have some fun. And you’ll certainly Never Eat Alone.

P.S. The reason why the menu seemed limited is that instead of dining at my original target, The Black Hoof, I managed instead to wander unsuspectingly into its less-sophisticated younger sister, The Hoof Cafe (in my defense, the signage was misleading!).

Details: 923 Dundas Street West, Toronto, ON, Canada (+14165518854)