> after a few trips without disaster

100%.

Exposure therapy is the cure for anxiety. I have a personal hunch that part of the massive rise in anxiety in the world is explained by many of us no longer being regularly forced outside of our comfort zones. Before the Internet and smartphones, we were obligated to go into the unknown much more often. It was a constant mandatory exposure therapy.

Today, I can't remember the last time I walked into a restaurant without already having seen the inside on Google Maps, read several reviews on Yelp, and perused the menu online.

And multiply by dinner eating. Which I have done solo many hundreds of times between business and other travel. Not something I think twice about. In fact, at conferences, I've sometimes been peopled-out by the end of the day and actively avoided going out of my way to setup group dinners unless they came together organically.